Who Was Antonio Chi Su? All About Lyn May’s Husband

Antonio Chi Su was a Chinese-Mexican businessman who became known across Mexico as the husband of Lyn May, one of the most famous vedettes and film stars in Mexican entertainment. He was not an actor, a singer or a man who chased cameras. He ran a restaurant, stood beside a very public wife, and lived a mostly quiet life that only became widely known after his death in 2008.

The story of Antonio Chi Su is short in documented facts but strong in feeling. He married Lyn May in 1988, they opened a Chinese restaurant together in Mexico City, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004, and he died four years later. His widow’s grief, which she has spoken about openly and dramatically in interviews, kept his name alive long after he was gone.

Quick Facts

What Is Known About His Early Life

The honest answer is, very little. Antonio Chi Su did not leave behind interviews, memoirs or a public biography of his own. He is described in reliable summaries as a Chinese-Mexican businessman, which tells us about his heritage and his work, but not about his birth date, his parents or his childhood. No strong source gives a confirmed date of birth for him, and readers should be careful with websites that present one as certain.

That gap is normal for a private businessman of his time. He became known in the late 1980s, before social media and long before every public figure had a detailed online profile. What survives is the outline of his adult life in Mexico City, his marriage and his business. The rest was lived away from record, and inventing details to fill it would not be fair to his memory.

His heritage, however, shaped the work he is remembered for. Mexico has a long and often overlooked Chinese community, with families who built businesses, restaurants and shops over many generations. A Chinese-Mexican restaurateur in the capital was part of that wider story. Food was a natural meeting point between the two cultures, and it became the center of his life with Lyn May.

By the time he met his future wife, she was already famous. Lyn May, born Liliana Mendiola Mayanes in Acapulco in 1952, had become a star of Mexican cabaret and of the popular ficheras films of the 1970s and 1980s. Her world was stage lights, film sets and headlines. His world, by every account, was work, business and home. That contrast is exactly what people who write about the couple return to again and again.

Marriage to Lyn May in 1988

Antonio Chi Su married Lyn May in 1988. She has described the marriage as a long and deeply loved one, and in later interviews she spoke of being with him for about 25 years when she counted their time together. In a life that had included fame, difficult early years and very public relationships, he appears in her telling as a calm and steady partner.

Their marriage joined two very different public images. She was one of the best known vedettes in Mexico, a dancer and actress whose name filled theatres and film posters. He was a businessman who, by all accounts, had no wish to perform. Yet the partnership worked as both a marriage and a working team, because the couple soon built a business together in the heart of Mexico City.

Lyn May had daughters from an earlier part of her life, and family life for the couple was based in the capital. Details of their home life were not shared in the detailed way modern celebrity couples share them, and Antonio did not give interviews about being a husband or a stepfather. What is clear from his wife’s later words is the depth of the bond. She has called him the great love of her life in the way she talks about that period, and her actions after his death showed how hard she found it to let him go.

It is also worth noting what happened after him. Lyn May later married film producer Guillermo Calderon Stell in 2008 and was widowed again in 2018. Even so, when interviewers ask about love and loss, it is the marriage to Antonio Chi Su, and the grief that followed it, that produces her most famous and most emotional answers.

The Chinese Restaurant on Avenida Bucareli

Together, Antonio Chi Su and Lyn May opened a Chinese restaurant on Avenida Bucareli in Mexico City. Bucareli is one of the capital’s well known central avenues, close to newspapers, government buildings and the busy life of the city center. A restaurant there was not a quiet side project. It placed the couple’s business in the flow of the city, serving diners in a competitive food scene.

The restaurant became the business fact most closely tied to his name. It combined his heritage and his work in one place, offering Chinese food in the middle of Mexico City, with a famous wife as a partner. For Lyn May, it was also a step into business life beyond the stage and screen, at a time when the film genre that had made her famous was fading.

Some later websites add large claims to this part of the story, describing festivals, mentorship programs, art work, property deals and a large personal fortune. Those details are not found in strong sources about Antonio Chi Su and should be treated as unconfirmed. The documented core is simple and solid. He was a restaurateur, the restaurant stood on Avenida Bucareli, the couple ran it together, and after his death Lyn May inherited it.

Running a restaurant is daily, unglamorous work, and that may be the truest picture of Antonio. While his wife’s past was in bright lights, his known working life was in a kitchen and dining room, looking after customers, staff and a business in a hard city market. It gave the couple an income and an identity that did not depend on her fame alone.

Illness, Death and a Widow’s Grief

In 2004, Antonio Chi Su was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He lived with the illness for four years. Little is publicly documented about his treatment, and this article does not add detail that no strong source provides. What is known is the end of the story. He died in 2008, and Lyn May became a widow after two decades of marriage.

Her grief then became one of the most talked about parts of her life story. In television interviews years later, she confirmed a story that many people had found hard to believe. She said that after his death she had his body exhumed and kept it at home, sleeping beside it for a time, because she could not accept losing him. She said her mother argued with her about it every day, telling her she had to let him rest, and in time she did.

It is an extreme story, and it should be told the way she told it herself, as an act of deep grief rather than as a joke or a horror tale. She explained it in simple terms. She had lived with him for many years, she loved him, and she did not want to let him go. Whatever readers make of the choice, it leaves no doubt about the strength of the marriage from her side.

After his death she inherited the restaurant, carrying the business they had built together into her later life. She continued working in entertainment in her own way, appearing in documentary film, music videos and television talk shows, and working for a time as a dance instructor in Cancun. But Antonio’s death stayed a fixed point in her interviews, the loss she measured other losses against.

His Place in Lyn May’s Story

To understand why people still search for Antonio Chi Su, you have to understand his wife’s place in Mexican culture. Lyn May appeared in around a hundred films by common counts, starred at the famous Teatro Blanquita, and remained a public figure for decades, through career revivals, a documentary about the great vedettes, and many television appearances. A husband who stood outside that world, and yet mattered so much inside it, naturally draws curiosity.

Antonio also represents something wider. He was part of the Chinese-Mexican community whose restaurants and businesses helped shape city life while rarely making headlines. His name survives not because he sought fame, but because a very famous woman loved him, worked beside him and refused, even in death, to treat him as a footnote.

That is why the careful approach matters here. His real legacy does not need invented companies or guessed fortunes. It is a marriage that lasted from 1988 to 2008, a restaurant on a famous avenue, and a widow whose public grief told the world, more clearly than any biography could, who he had been to her.

FAQs

Who was Antonio Chi Su?

Antonio Chi Su was a Chinese-Mexican businessman and restaurateur. He married Mexican vedette and actress Lyn May in 1988, ran a Chinese restaurant with her in Mexico City, and died in 2008.

What business did Antonio Chi Su run?

He and Lyn May opened a Chinese restaurant on Avenida Bucareli in Mexico City. After his death, Lyn May inherited the restaurant. Larger claims about other companies or a big fortune are not confirmed by strong sources.

How did Antonio Chi Su die?

He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004 and died in 2008. Details of his treatment have not been publicly documented in reliable sources.

Did Lyn May really exhume her husband’s body?

Yes, by her own account. In interviews she confirmed that, in deep grief after his death, she exhumed his body and kept it at home for a time before her mother persuaded her to let him rest.

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Final Thoughts

Antonio Chi Su lived most of his life outside the spotlight, and the public record respects that shape even now. We know his heritage, his work, his marriage and his illness. We do not know his birth date or his childhood, and honest writing should leave those spaces empty rather than fill them with guesses.

What we do know is enough to understand him. Antonio Chi Su was the steady businessman beside one of Mexico’s most flamboyant stars, her partner in a Mexico City restaurant and in life for twenty years. Lyn May’s own words and grief after 2008 remain the strongest proof of the man he was to her, devoted, calm and deeply loved.