Ty Bailey, pioneering Knave of Hearts restaurant owner and swim coach, has died at 69

Robert H. “Ty” Bailey, 69, who hosted countless romantics over 28 years at the Knave of Hearts, his South Street restaurant, before becoming a youth swim coach, died at his home in West Norriton on Feb. 16. The cause included complications related to heart surgery, his wife said.

Mr. Bailey, who closed the Knave in 2003, suffered an aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection in 2017 and needed further surgery a year later. The heart ailment was a blow to Mr. Bailey, a lifelong athlete who completed more than 40 marathons with a personal best sub-three-hour time. He was particularly proud of his six Ironman World Championship triathlons, including a sub-10-hour finish. He met his wife, Britta Schasberger, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Vietnam Memorial 10K race in 1990. They were married in 1994 and lived above the restaurant.

The couple moved to a house they owned in the boating community of Port Indian, along the Schuylkill, after he sold the Knave. He tried working at another restaurant, but it was clear that he needed a new career, his wife said. He started coaching swimming at the local Y, at first teaching tots who were the ages of their children, Aiden, now 19, Kahlia, 17, and Taryn, 15.

“Many people knew him as Coach Ty and not as Ty Bailey, Knave of Hearts,” Schasberger said. “Selling the restaurant demarcated the phases of his life.” Over the years, he coached for the Phoenixville YMCA, Phoenixville High School, Episcopal Academy Aquatic Club, and Upper Main Line YMCA until his health began to fail in November 2020.

He took his children on adventures on the kayaks or bikes. “He was a bit of a risk-taker and would encourage them to take risks — climb walls, and jump off cliffs,” Schasberger said.

Mr. Bailey and the Knave rode the wave of Philadelphia’s so-called restaurant renaissance of the mid-1970s, which included such destinations as Astral Plane, Friday Saturday Sunday, and Frog across town and Judy’s Cafe around the corner. “I think of Ty as being Superman,” said Weaver Lilley, a founder of Friday Saturday Sunday and a commercial photographer. As a cyclist himself, Lilley said he couldn’t keep up with Mr. Bailey’s pace. “He was a monster,” he said.

Mr. Bailey, who grew up mainly in Connecticut, dropped out of Tulane University in New Orleans. In a 1994 interview, he said a friend studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts encouraged him to come to Philadelphia. He hitchhiked from New York, abandoning his moccasins on the way because, he said, they hurt his feet. He liked to say he arrived in Philly barefoot.

He rented the building at 230 South St. that later became the restaurant for $175 a month. Seeking work, he turned up at Astral Plane, where owner Reed Apaghian hired him as a dishwasher before moving him to salad maker and then to chef. “Ty was an incredibly charming, incredibly handsome triathlon winner with a body by God,” said Apaghian, who led Mr. Bailey, an avid collector of things, on flea-marketing trips.

Mr. Bailey had planned to convert his empty storefront for a business, and decided that it would become a restaurant, which he decorated with an eclectic selection of flea-market finds such as Depression-era glass, mismatched tablecloths and cutlery, and 1930s Fiesta Ware dishes, along with prints by the artist Maxfield Parrish. Apaghian gave Mr. Bailey framed illustrations from the book The Knave of Hearts, which provided the name for his 22-seat date-night destination.

The Knave opened on Valentine’s Day 1975.

When the landlord raised the rent to $185 a month, Mr. Bailey recalled, “I was outraged.” He had saved enough money for a down payment and bought the building for $22,500. He expanded the restaurant to 160 seats by including adjacent properties.

Robert Drake, now a WXPN DJ, met Mr. Bailey in 1981 and hosted events at the Love Lounge on the second floor. Drake called Mr. Bailey and his wife “beacons for so many neighbors. Dining there truly emphasized the word casual since everyone was family.”

Typical of that generation of restaurateurs, “everybody was flying by the seat of their pants,” said Lilley, who sold Friday Saturday Sunday in 2015 to chef Chad Williams and his now-wife Hannah.

The Knave’s menu, executed by a kitchen of mainly Southeast Asian immigrants, was studded with whimsically named, big-portioned dishes, most famously the Chicken Coco Loco, for which medallions were cooked in a sauce of coconut cream and curried peanuts and served over couscous; the Decadent Dinner Salad; and a cold strawberry soup that called for a slug of brandy that was set ablaze.

Jeffrey Natt, who waited tables, bartended, and managed at the Knave in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Mr. Bailey engendered a sense of family among staff. Turnover was comparatively low. Many workers still keep in touch. “He let the staff run the restaurant,” he said. “We were artists and musicians and misfits. Creative people. But we were professionals. It was a business.” Mr. Bailey threw annual picnics in Fairmount Park for staff, their friends, and his regulars.

Lou Boquila, chef-owner of the Filipino restaurants Perla and Sarvida, was hired as a dishwasher, with no experience, toward the end of the Knave’s run. Mr. Bailey pulled him in to work on the line. “I will remember his calm and caring nature in the kitchen,” he said. “He was always easy to talk to and willing to give advice.” Boquila said Bailey was a big part of the reason that he got into the industry.

The Knave’s shabby-chic, fern-bar mishmash delighted its boomer clientele but did not always impress the critics. Stan Hochman, writing in the Philadelphia Daily News, opined in 1985: “The Knave of Hearts has the best wine list in Society Hill and the worst background music. Who wants to savor a wonderful chardonnay like Sequoia Grove to the screech and wail of some punk rock group? ... If you dig The Police, sirens and all, and can block out your neighbors’ conversation, you might enjoy dinner here, because the portions are generous, the prices moderate, and the cooking skillful.”

His wife called him “a larger-than-life character in a lot of ways. He made friends with everyone.” Mr. Bailey once came upon an encampment of homeless people near Penn’s Landing, where he befriended one man and invited him to the Knave for dinner. “He made sure everybody at the restaurant knew that this guy was getting this table and his dinner and the tip were on Ty and that everybody should not make him feel uncomfortable and that he was Ty’s friend. He wanted to make sure that everybody made him feel like a king.”

Besides his wife and children, he is survived by his father, Bill Bailey, his stepmother Jean Bailey; brothers Tad Bailey and Peyton Sturges; and a sister, Sarah Bailey Turgeon.

Services will be announced at a later date because of the COVID-19 pandemic.