Tanya Grubich Dies: Pioneering Broadway And Touring Theater Marketer Was 60

Greg Evans
·2-min read

Tanya Grubich, a pioneering marketer of Broadway and touring productions whose clients included the musicals Grand Hotel, Smokey Joe’s Cafe and Mamma Mia!, died February 16 of Early Onset Dementia. The Bucks County, Pennsylvania, resident was 60.

Born Tanya Marie Grubich in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Grubich grew up in the family business, the Original Christmas Store, traveling the world with her parents for inventory and opening and managing multiple locations.

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A 1983 graduate of Southern Methodist University (she later completed a three-year program at the Harvard Business School), Grubich began her theater career at PACE Theatrical Group in Houston, Texas, moving to New York City shortly thereafter to work on the Broadway and touring productions of Grand Hotel.

Grubich founded her own entertainment marketing agency in 1994, overseeing marketing and promotions for Broadway shows and touring properties including the national tours of Smokey Joe’s Café and Stomp. In 1998 she partnered with Laura Matalon to form TMG, also known as The Marketing Group, where Grubich and Matalon handled, among others, national tours of Mamma Mia!, The Producers, Wicked and Hairspray. In 2008, TMG became Allied Live, with offices in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.

Named a “Broadway Innovator” by The New York Times in 2006, Grubich was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 by the Broadway League. She was a board member of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and a long-time member of the Association of Press Agents and Managers.

Grubich met her wife Stephenie in late 2010 and they married in August 2014. Later that year, Grubich was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s originating from a series of concussions suffered over her lifetime. Grubich has donated her brain to science to continue the fight against this disease.

In addition to her wife Stephenie Harris, she is survived by mother Annette Marie Bartlett, brothers Justin Grubich (and wife Jessica Ogiony) and Michael Grubich. She was predeceased by father George Richard Grubich.

Donations to the Alzheimer’s Association can be made in her name at the Association’s website.

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