Timothy Patrick Costello


Shelter Island Heights resident Timothy Patrick Costello died on November 25, 2009 at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, after a valiant 15-year battle against lung disease. He was 65 years old.


Tim was born in Manhattan on March 13, 1944. He attended Fordham Preparatory School and graduated from Le Moyne College with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Following a stint in the Army from 1966 to 1968, Tim returned to Manhattan to assume responsibilities for the family business, Costello’s Restaurant on East 44th Street. It was in operation until 1992 when it closed its by-then famous doors.


In a “Farewell to Tim” the New York Post described Costello’s as “… a home away from home for generations of journos like Jimmy Breslin and Steve Dunleavy, New Yorker cartoonists like James Thurber and Pulitizer Prize-winning authors like Frank McCourt, who wrote in ‘Angela’s Ashes’ about being thrown out of the place.” It was at Costello’s that Tim met Kathryn O’Rourke in 1975, and, according to the family, after his being deemed “a good man” by Kathy’s mother, the two were married in 1977 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. 


A year later, Tim and Kathy came to Shelter Island, establishing a second home here that the family calls “Costello Castle” and describes as “the centerpiece for gatherings of family and friends, a destination vacation spot for countless loved ones, the host of an occasional wedding, and scene of merriment.”


A celebration of Tim’s life took place on Monday, November 30, 2009 during a Funeral Mass at Our Lady of the Isle Roman Catholic Church where Tim was remembered as a man who “loved to entertain, travel, take photographs, garden, listen to the radio and enjoy a good story.”


Donations may be made in Tim’s memory to the following: COPD Foundation, c/o Dr. Byron Thomashaw, 161 Fort Washington Avenue, New York, New York 10032, or Our Lady of the Isle Youth Program, P.O. Box 3027, Shelter Island Heights, New York 11965.