Buff Cobb, an actress who found fame as co-host of one of television's first talk shows, "Mike and Buff," and later produced a series of plays on Broadway, died at a nursing home in Lebanon, NH. She was 82. Ms. Cobb was married in 1949 to Mike Wallace, who would go on to become a famous correspondent on "60 Minutes." In the early '50s, they were hired by CBS to host a live, daily talk show (originally called "Two Sleepy People"), based in New York, in which they would debate some topic of the day. From 1951 to 1952 they were also hosts of "All Around the Town," another CBS show. The talk show ceased in 1953 and the two divorced in 1957. Ms. Cobb was married four times in total, three unions ending in divorce. Her fourth husband, H. Spencer Martin, died in 1987.

In 1963, she turned to producing, presenting Shaw's Too True to Be Good on Broadway. The starry cast included Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke, Eileen Heckart, Glynis Johns, Robert Preston and David Wayne. Ms. Cobb was nominated for the now-vanished Best Producer of a Play Tony Award. She followed this up with the less-successful Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory and, in 1973, Children of the Wind, which took place in a theatrical boarding house and featured in its cast Marvo the Wonder Dog — playing the role of Marvo the Wonder Dog.

She was born Patricia Cobb Chapman on Oct. 19, 1928, in Florence, Italy, into a family of artists and writers. He grandfather was a author and columnist Irvin S. Cobb, for worked for the movies and the New York World and wrote many books. Her father was a singer and her mother an author, who wrote about her father Irving in the book "My Wayward Father."

Following high school, she began acting in stock companies, eventually touring with Tallulah Bankhead in Private Lives from 1946 to 1948. It was during this tour that she met Mike Wallace.