Cheryl Tricoci, who built a beauty empire with her husband Mario Tricoci, died Monday of cancer at 76.
“She was beautiful inside and out,” said Beverly Lesmeister, a friend since childhood and senior guest relations manager for Mario Tricoci Salon & Spa, which has 13 locations in the Chicago area and 1,300 employees.
“They were a true partnership, a wonderful, loving couple,” said the couple’s friend Mark J. Ballard, a retired Cook County judge.
Ballard, who, as a lawyer, worked for Mario Tricoci before becoming a judge, said the salon owner used the initials MACT for one of the corporations that ran their business because it stood for “Mario and Cheryl Tricoci.”
They were married for 51 years. She died at their Chicago home, Ballard said.
Mrs. Tricoci encouraged her husband to expand and diversify the business. She recognized early on that spa services like facials, manicures and massages would become just as important to customers and salon owners as a haircut or blow dry.
She was well-known in charitable circles. In 2018, Mrs. Tricoci helped establish a beauty salon at Misericordia, a center on the North Side for people with developmental disabilities, where residents could be styled by professional hairdressers and students from Tricoci University of Beauty Culture.
“She was filled with joy to see the smiling faces of our children and adults as they left the salon,” according to a written statement from Sister Rosemary Connelly, Misericordia’s longtime leader. “Cheryl and her husband Mario gave dignity to our young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and they really made a difference by improving the quality of their life.”
Mrs. Tricoci also was a longtime supporter of Bear Necessities, a pediatric cancer foundation. She helped arrange makeovers for sick children and their families.
“Cheryl would invite them in to our salon, maybe they’d have manicure, pedicure parties,” Lesmeister said. “We would have lunch and little gift bags.”
She bought tables at Bear Necessities fundraisers and art that was created by young cancer patients at auctions.
“Cheryl and Mario probably have the largest collection of patient art of our children,” said Bear Necessities founder Kathleen Casey. “Each year, they purchased as much as they could. She really embraced our children and the needs of our children.”
Mrs. Tricoci grew up on the Southwest Side, the daughter of a florist. She attended St. Daniel the Prophet grade school and Kelly High School, Lesmeister said.
Her husband, an immigrant from the province of Cosenza, Italy, started his first salon in 1963 in Villa Park. He met his future wife when he was looking for models for a show, according to Lesmeister. At the time, Cheryl Reuss was teaching at the Patricia Stevens modeling school.
“She was so creative with makeup and hair, with everything,” Lesmeister said. “Cheryl was always a step ahead with fashion. Her hair was always gorgeous.”
She said Mrs. Tricoci helped expand the business.
“They got married, and she started helping with the books,” Lesmeister said. “He just had a few small salons at the time and a cosmetology school. She started doing the bookkeeping, and she told him, ‘Mario, you should really [offer] makeup.’
“She did that, and then she had one spa room in their first really big salon at Woodfield Mall. She had a facial room, and it just expanded, and she was selling spa days.”
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Tricoci is survived by their sons Mario, who is in the hotel and hospitality business, and Dr. Michael Tricoci, and five grandchildren, according to Ballard and Lesmeister. Funeral arrangements are pending.
