Ricki Lake has 'found love again' 2 years after husband's suicide

Ricki Lake is welcoming romance back into her life as she approaches the two-year anniversary of her husband's death by suicide.

"I found love again," Lake said Wednesday at the TCA Winter Press Tour. "My husband, who passed from mental illness and suicide, it’ll be two years on Feb. 11, and I just recently found a brilliant new love."

Lake, 50, met Jeff Scult, who created clothing brand One Golden Thread, through a mutual friend.

The new couple has been dating for three and a half months, she said. "He's making me really happy."

It's a much-deserved positive update for Lake, who lost husband Christian Evans a few months before their five-year wedding anniversary. Evans had struggled with bipolar disorder and suffered manic episodes. He and Lake separated and reconciled in the months before his death.

"For anyone who has ever lost a family member or friend to mental illness, my heart goes out to you," she wrote on Instagram this week. "I am a greater person for having known him and spent the past 6 and a half years of my life with him."

As recently as fall 2018, Lake continued to regularly share pictures and past memories of Evans.

"This is unconditional love," she captioned a photo posted in October. "Eternal love ... Though he is no longer here in the physical, his kind spirit is everywhere and guides me with everything I do."

In another post, she wrote, "My beloved Christian Evans, though mentally ill and hospitalized multiple times was somehow able to buy a gun. He would use that gun to take his life two weeks later. We must do something to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill."