Diane Gail Palumbo

Diane Gail Palumbo was a wife, mother and longtime Long Island homemaker who spent most of her life out of the public eye, best known to the wider community as the mother of New York State Senator Anthony Palumbo. She died on October 13, 2026, at her home in Mattituck, New York, at the age of 83.

She was born Diane Shene on August 4, 1943, in Bay Shore, New York, one of three children of Howard and Ellen (Larson) Shene. On June 21, 1961, in Blue Point, she married Anthony Palumbo, a Brooklyn born U.S. Coast Guard veteran who went on to become a Suffolk County Police homicide detective and later a Suffolk County District Attorney's office investigator. The couple settled in Patchogue, where they raised three children, and Diane Palumbo was a stay at home mother whose life centered on her family and her Catholic parish.

Her husband died in January 2019 at age 80, after nearly 58 years of marriage. In her later years Diane Palumbo moved from Patchogue to Mattituck, on Long Island's North Fork, where she remained active in Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic Church and was remembered within the Southside Triangle No. 134, a Masonic affiliated women's fraternal organization based in Sayville, where she had served as past beloved queen.

Palumbo's public profile, modest as it was, came through her son Anthony Palumbo, a longtime member of the Suffolk County Republican Committee who represents New York's 1st State Senate district on the East End of Long Island and previously served in the State Assembly. News of her death was first reported by local Long Island outlets, which noted her decades in Patchogue and her family's deep roots in Suffolk County civic and public safety circles.

Diane Palumbo is survived by her three children, Lori Palumbo, Sharon Palumbo and Anthony H. Palumbo (and his wife, Tracy), three grandchildren, Lorelei, Ryan and Madeline Palumbo, and two sisters, Linda Johannessen and Janet Watts (and her husband, David). No cause of death has been made public.