Hayden Woman Diana Dunn Dies at 77 After 40-Year Marriage to Steven

Do you remember the smell of fish bait on a hot August afternoon, clinging to the upholstery of a car that had seen better days, mixed with the faint, sweet scent of whipped cream? That was Diana Richmond Dunn’s world — a life lived with the kind of unapologetic texture that only comes from loving animals, loving food, and loving the people who had to put up with it.

She passed away on January 24, 2026, just before her 78th birthday, leaving behind a legacy that was less about grand monuments and more about the quiet, persistent warmth of a woman who knew how to make a room laugh. According to her obituary published in the Steamboat Pilot, Diana was born in Boston on July 17, 1948, to Joseph W. Epply Jr. and Barbara Schofield Epply, growing up across New England before settling into a rhythm that would eventually bring her to the high desert of Colorado.

It wasn’t an easy transition from the ski slopes of Conway, New Hampshire, where she graduated from Kennett High School in 1966 and skied for several years, to the arid plains of western Colorado. But the move made sense when you consider the pull of the sky. She met Jack Todoverto at Olivet College in Michigan, and they married in 1971. When Jack became a pilot for Frontier Airlines, they moved to Denver, then to Craig in 1975, where Jack ran the Fixed Base Operations at the Craig Airport alongside partner Scott Livingston. Diana worked as a secretary for the Colorado-Ute Electric Association at the Hayden Electric Generating Station.

The marriage dissolved in 1978, but the work remained. It was at Hayden Station that she met Steven Dunn, who started as a chemist in 1982. They married in 1986 and moved to a small ranchette outside of Hayden, a place that offered just enough space for chickens, goats, dogs, and cats. Diana was, by all accounts, an animal lover in the truest sense.

If you look closely at the stories of her later years, a pattern emerges. She didn’t just live in Hayden; she participated in it. She attended the Farmers Market and Art in the Park, though she had a particular fondness for the display of live raptors. Her favorite meals were specific, almost ritualistic: soup and salad at Freshies Restaurant, or lobster at the Ore House on special occasions, always followed by mud pie.

When her sons Mark and Jeffrey were born in 1988 and 1990, she stepped back from the workforce to raise them, returning to real estate and banking in the 2000s before retiring in 2007 after the family moved into town. But her retirement wasn’t a slowing down; it was a shift in focus. She loved chasing her grandchildren through the house, eliciting shrill screams of delight. She loved making people laugh, sometimes by doing strange things with whipped cream that mortified her sons on more than one occasion.

The Pilot reported that she passed away from breast cancer, and her remains were cremated. She is survived by her husband Steven, to whom she was married for forty years; her sons Mark and Jeffrey; her brothers Walter and Mark Epply; stepsisters Katie Green and Nancy Thornton; five grandchildren; two Jack Russell Terriers named Teddy and Lilly; and two cats, Peanut and Piglet.

A family celebration of life was held at the Ore House, where the same place she loved for its lobster and mud pie, many good memories were shared with laughter and some tears. It feels fitting that the meal that marked the end of her life’s journey was the same meal that had marked so many of its celebrations. You can still taste the salt of the lobster and the sweetness of the pie, hanging in the air long after the plates have been cleared.