Florence “Flo” Anthony, a trailblazing entertainment journalist, author and TV and radio personality who broke a number of barriers for women of color, died August 6 of cancer. She was 74.

Jack Hirsch, biographer of Anthony’s husband, Olympic and pro boxing champ Michael Spinks, confirmed the news to Anthony’s longtime publication New York Amsterdam News.

Born on March 4, 1952, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Anthony began her career as a publicist for athletes including Muhammad Ali and fellow champion boxers including Spinks and Larry Holmes, working with the latter from 1982-85 including his reign as heavyweight champion. She began working as a journalist during the 1980s and made a name the following decade as a scoop-making celebrity reporter and becoming the first woman staffer at the New York Post‘s sports and entertainment department and its famous Page Six.

She started at the Post as an agate clerk in 1986 before moving to the entertainment department. She detailed her seven-year Post experience in a 2013 interview with the website Urban Bridgez: “After a while, they said, ‘You flunked the job,’ and I was like. ‘What do you mean I flunked?’ But it was the thing of being the agate clerk, you had to do a lot, and I would be there all night till like 5 in the morning. So they was like. ‘Don’t worry, we see you have a masters degree in fine arts. We’re moving you to the entertainment department.’ I went to the entertainment department kicking and screaming. They said, ‘Look it’s a day job and pays more money, so why are you upset?’ So I went from the first African American woman in the sports department to the first African American woman in the entertainment department.”

Anthony went on to become a familiar face to viewers of talk shows and celebrity-themed entertainment news programs. She appeared on shows hosted by the likes of Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jessy Raphael, Maury Povich, Joan Rivers, Ricki Lakeand many others and was a regular contributor and sometimes co-host on E!’s The Gossip Show during its entire 1993-98 run. She also did episodes of such programs as Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, E! True Hollywood Story, Most Shocking Celebrity Moments and Most Annoying People and was a frequent contributor to TV One’s Life After, Unsung and Unsung Hollywood.

Her popular weekly column Go with the Flo launched early this century in New York Amsterdam News and in syndication. She also had a nationally syndicated radio segment called “Gossip to Go With Flo” and another called “Flo Anthony’s Big Apple Buzz” and was in the magazine game, serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Black Noir and as editor-in-chief of Black Elegance.

In that 2013 Urban Bridgez interview, she also discussed the definition of a journalist. “Well, a journalist is someone who actually looks for a real story,” Anthony said. “Not just picking something up off of a blog and not just being some wildcat person with a blog, but someone looking for a real story. Someone who researches the story, talks to people regarding the story and also a journalist is someone who breaks stories.”

Anthony also was a novelist, penning the books Keeping Secrets, Telling Lies, Deadly Stuff Players, One Last Deadly Play and Last Call for a Deadly Diva.

She began dating Spinks in 1987, around the time he was the IBF heavyweight champion before losing the title to Mike Tyson. They married early this year. She and Hirsch co-authored Michael “Jinx” Spinks: An Authorized Biography.

Details on survivors or memorial service plans were in complete.

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