Kate Linder was cast as Esther Valentine on The Young and the Restless over 43 years ago in April 1982 and her first air date was April 16th. She had an exhibit commemorating her 40th Anniversary on the show at The Hollywood Museum for an entire year! Linder also remains a key member of the top-rated daytime drama’s cast. In April 2008, Linder received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In October 2025, Linder was inducted into the Silver Circle Honors for over 25 years of service to television and the community at the Daytime Emmy Awards. Linder is currently serving her second term as the Television Academy’s Governor of the Performers Peer Group and was previously elected to two terms as the Governor of the Daytime Programming Peer Group. She was also elected to multiple terms as a SAG-AFTRA board member. In 2023, Linder’s character crossed over to sister soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful, for a weeklong storyline arc.
Linder’s feature film credits include Hysteria, Erased, Miss Meadows, Garry Marshall’s Mother’s Day, Voice from the Stone, The Charnel House, Echo Boomers, Book of Leah, A Little White Lie, and the upcoming feature, Basic.
She enjoys the best of both worlds on the air and in the air. “Acting is my life and my creative satisfaction,” says Linder. She never quit her pre-Y&R weekend job as a United Airlines flight attendant because it keeps her grounded.
Linder was born on November 2nd in Pasadena and raised in Arcadia by her CPA father and homemaker mother, with her younger brother, Randy. She entered dance classes at age 3 and by the time she graduated high school, she had appeared in major singing and dancing roles in Promises, Promises, Three Penny Opera, L’il Abner, Jesus Christ Superstar, and many others.
Earning a degree in Theater Arts from San Francisco State University, Linder kept busy in school productions and Bay Area stock and repertory theaters. Linder remained in San Francisco following graduation and between stage roles, where she met her future husband, Dr. Ronald Linder, who subsequently joined the Public Health and Medicine faculty at UCLA. Married on Valentine’s Day in 1976 (thus her character’s last name), the couple settled in Los Angeles. Linder soon broke into TV with sitcom and drama guest-starring roles. Linder starred in Cotillion ’65 as a dance teacher with a dual life that won multiple film fest awards.
Linder was named the celebrity spokesperson for the ALS Association in 2005 following her late brother-in-law’s diagnosis and is especially active with the ALS Network as their celebrity ambassador. Linder spends most holidays serving food at the Los Angeles Mission. Linder made many USO tours with the late Johnny Grant and spent Thanksgivings visiting troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Korea, later visiting Guantanamo Bay and sent off departing troops from Fort Hood. Linder and Robin Wyss debuted her first Kate Linder & Friends charity tea featuring her Y&R castmates in 1998 in Victoria, BC. They hosted the event in Vancouver for over 20 years for different charities. In 2012, Linder began hosting teas to benefit March of Dimes Canada in Toronto and Calgary and now she does the same for other Canadian charities. Linder annually serves as Celebrity Ambassador for both the Lupus Foundation of America’s Los Angeles Walk to End Lupus Now and the ALS Network’s Walk & Roll to Cure ALS and she’s been building houses with Habitat for Humanity for decades.
She became the first daytime actress to compete in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach celebrity car race. Linder devotes her time to work and her charities since her husband passed after 41 years of a happy marriage.
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Website: www.KateLinder.com Twitter: @KATELINDER Instagram: @katelinderyr Facebook: @officialkatelinder
