Recently, an old friend asked Camille Cosby how she was holding up. The comedian's wife, married 51 years, was silent for a moment.
"You know, everyone has their limits," she confided.
But the glimpse into her pain was fleeting, and Mrs. Bill Cosby was instantly back in the character of the loyal defender.
"I think his problem is that he's far too trusting and he lets things go too far and people can get the wrong idea," the 69-year-old said.
Friends talked to The Post last week about the marriage of Bill and Camille, and why she has not lost faith in her husband, despite the more than two dozen women who have come forward to allege that he sexually assaulted them.
"She's always believed in him. She's not the short-leash type of wife, so it's not like she's forbidden him to go to the Playboy Mansion or other things," one friend said. "It's part of show business and being a big celebrity."
The priest who married the Cosbys, the Rev. Carl Dianda, remembers well the soft-spoken and intelligent girl named Camille Hanks who attended St. Cyprian Elementary-Middle School in southeast Washington, DC, and a threadbare Catholic church a few miles away in Olney, Md.
The just-retired priest recalls Camille and her three siblings, Guy Jr., Rene and Eric, were nothing short of adorable — and devout.
Camille, with her neatly pressed skirts, immaculately kept hair and the brightest of smiles, stood out because she never missed Sunday Mass. She also took her education seriously, and the Oblate Sisters of St. Francis de Sales provided the foundation for a scholastic career that culminated in a doctorate degree in education.
"The only time she missed Mass was when she married Bill Cosby," says Father Dianda, who presided over the couple's wedding.
Bill and Camille circa 1996 when he won an Emmy for "I Spy."Photo: AP
She was just 18 when she met Bill Cosby, then 25 and an aspiring comic. Although he grew up in Philadelphia, he had family in Maryland he would visit often. He had dropped out of Temple University, and no one, not even Dianda, thought at first that he was a serious suitor.
"He wasn't famous at all," the priest said. "He was doing these comedy bits, but no one knew who he was."
The pair met on a blind date at a bowling alley. Dianda says it was love at first sight for Cosby.
Camille was "the most beautiful girl and the nicest person," Dianda remembers. "I baptized her brother and her sister, and she came from a really good family and, at the time they got married, I don't think that Bill had any other girlfriends, ever."
The comedian would hold her hand, and he desperately tried to ingratiate himself with her parents, traveling from New York, where he lived, to Maryland to attend church and other functions, always schmoozing with Camille's father.
"[Camille's mother] Catherine really didn't want her to marry Bill, and her father just didn't want to be aggravated anymore, so they gave their blessings," says a family friend who attended St. Peter's Church. "Bill is wonderful in a lot of ways, but you knew right away, when he first came to our church, Camille may have gotten more than what she bargained for."
Camille's dad, the late Guy Hanks, was convinced that if Bill ever cheated, "Camille's first instinct would be to bash him over the head with a frying pan," she says.
The long-distance relationship went on for just one year before they tied the knot in 1964.
After they married, Camille, then 19, pushed Cosby to go back to school. She wanted her husband to "have something he could fall back on in case show business didn't work out," a friend says.
With a background in education and business management, Camille handled the family's finances. Beginning in 1966, she began having children, and the couple eventually had five.
Bill and Camille Cosby with their children.Photo: Zumapress.com
Meanwhile, Cosby's stand-up career soared, and he landed his first big television role in the 1965 NBC TV series "I Spy," a show Dianda says he still watches religiously on weekends.
He went on to create the Fat Albert character and scored three hit movies opposite screen legend Sidney Poitier in the 1970s with "Uptown Saturday Night," "Let's Do It Again" and "A Piece of the Action."
But it was in the 1980s that Cosby's star soared above everyone else's and he became America's Dad on "The Cosby Show."
The show closely mimicked Camille and Bill's real life, with the television couple having four girls and one boy who, like his real-life son, Ennis, battled dyslexia. Cosby, who starred as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, paid homage to Camille's real-life family by giving his television wife the maiden name of Hanks.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Phylicia Rashad, Sabrina Le Beauf, Geoffrey Owens, Tempestt Bledsoe, Bill Cosby and Keisha Knight Pulliam on "The Cosby Show."Photo: Everett Collection
Tragedy arrived in 1997, when Ennis, their only son, was murdered at age 27 on a roadside in Los Angeles. His car had gotten a flat tire near a freeway, and he had been attempting to change it when he was fatally shot by a would-be robber.
Camille helped her husband cope with the shocking loss.
"She was a rock through that horrible ordeal. They came through it together as a family, and a lot of that had more to do with her than Bill," Dianda says.
A friend adds: "It was important for Camille to keep her head up. It was their only son, but think about it from Bill's perspective, too. He practically idolized Ennis, and now all of a sudden he was gone and I think he did more crying on Camille's shoulders than she him."
Dianda says that he had recently spoken to the couple but that a serious illness has prevented him from being more involved since the scandal erupted two months ago. He hasn't seen them since their 50th wedding anniversary party last year at the old church where he officiated their wedding.
Dianda believes, unequivocally, that Bill Cosby is innocent.
"I will help Camille and Bill in any way that they want me to. I'm not going to be embarrassed to say anything. What I know is what I know, and Bill has never done anything to embarrass anyone," the priest says.
In an exclusive interview with The Post last week, Bill Cosby, 77, praised his wife for standing by him.
"Love and the strength of womanhood," he said. "And, you can reverse that, the strength of womanhood and love."
Camille followed that with a statement of her own in which she made it clear she was standing by her man.
Even if the allegations turn out to be true, Dianda believes Camille will not abandon her spouse.
"I hope you have a wife as good as that," he says.
But some family friends say they're puzzled by Camille's loyalty.
"She's a beautiful, beautiful person, but it seems that everyone, including her husband, takes her mildness for granted," one pal says.
Photo: AP
"Is she embarrassed? Yes, no question. Anyone would be, and I spoke to her for a little while," says the friend. "She's intelligent, and sometimes you can't tell or explain anything to intelligent people. So you just tell them that you love them."
Another family friend says that the Cosbys have quietly done a lot for the Catholic Church in the Washington, DC, area, and that the congregation tries not to meddle in their affairs.
"You're not going to hear Father or anyone associated with the church publicly speak out and put their names on it no matter how bad this [scandal] gets," he says.
"Almost every year, Bill and Camille come in at some point, whether it's the anniversary, a concert, a trip to Ben's Chili Bowl, or just to visit. They get all of us together, and we have a blast. But you can tell that he has a roving eye. He always has, and Camille knows that, too."
Her guidance for her husband has been, "You can look, but just don't touch," the friend says.
"But he's obviously crossed that line in the past, and they've been able to put it behind them, but no one really wants to say much," he adds. "Even the church doesn't want to rock the boat, but many of us are embarrassed by this even if Camille isn't embarrassed."
A sorority sister of Camille wonders what motivates Camille's seemingly blind loyalty.
"If you know us, if you know Delta Sigma Theta, we are strong black women, and my sister Camille is by no means weak," she says "But it's puzzling why she's put up with it. She's a self-made woman. She didn't need Bill Cosby. You can say that Bill Cosby needed Camille Hanks."
The friend described Camille as always having "a quiet firmness."
"I know that in speaking with her — and we're usually honest with each other — she seems to believe that the women will be exposed eventually so it's best not to say anything," she says.
"But maybe the eventuality of her husband being exposed has arrived."
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