With Deepest Gratitude

The Tiambeng family thanks you for your presence and the immeasurable ways you have offered support during this difficult time. We’re deeply grateful for the compassion and community that have carried us.

To Katie’s friends and community: You were her chosen family. Thank you for the joy and love you brought into her life. Your unwavering loyalty and boundless affection for Katie continue to radiate, even in her absence. 

Thank you to all of our tribute speakers and to her beloved piano teacher Dr. Carol Wong and her fellow piano classmate Alex Schnapp for a heartfelt piano performance. Thank you for honoring Katie with us. Read our tributes below.

Tributes

Katie’s father, Alex

Dear friends and family,

Of my four children, it was our youngest, Katie, whose life I had the privilege of witnessing most fully, at every stage. From the earliest days, I was in the driver's seat—literally and figuratively—shuttling her from one lesson to the next: piano, swimming, karate, chess. Whatever her curiosity sparked, we were there, cheering her on. In high school, she began to focus on piano, and Susan and I were in the audience—whether it was a small recital or a packed concert hall. Our hearts swelled with pride every time she took the stage.

And as she stepped into adulthood, I was still by her side, packing and unpacking boxes as she chased her dreams from Austin to San Francisco, then to Richmond, and finally to New York. Each new place was a new chapter in her remarkable journey, and no matter how far she roamed, she always knew her mom and dad were just a call or a flight away. Whenever, whatever, wherever, we were there.

But what made all those years truly special wasn’t just seeing her achieve so much—it was the friendship we built. A deep, enduring friendship that only grew stronger with time. A very special father-daughter bond. Nearly every day, she FaceTimed us, sharing the big things, yes—but also the small, ordinary moments too: errands she ran, meals she cooked, random stories from her day. Those seemingly mundane conversations are now some of my most treasured memories. They made the distance between Dallas and New York feel like nothing at all.

When we weren’t catching up on the phone, we were planning our next adventure. Katie had an insatiable love for exploring the world and she never needed convincing to hop on a plane and meet us somewhere unexpected. She brought joy and excitement wherever we went. In Abu Dhabi, we cheered as she braved her first camel and ATV ride across the sand dunes. In New Zealand, we hopped from one miniature house to another in Hobbiton. In the Philippines, she gleefully rode on a cart pulled by a water buffalo. And just this past fall, we laughed and relaxed together in side-by-side beer spas in Budapest—one of those experiences only Katie could have dreamed up.

As much as we traveled, nothing made her light up quite like New York. She built a beautiful life here with you, her friends, and took much joy in sharing it with us. Because of her, we walked countless miles through Prospect Park, cheered at a Knicks game, marveled at the US Open finals, watched operas, dined at Michelin restaurants, and even gave pottery a try—though our creations gave us more laughs than masterpieces. She would always treat Mimi and Daddy (as she affectionately called us) to the very best.

The grief of losing her is unlike anything I’ve ever known—an ache that lives in every corner of my heart. And yet, even in this pain, I feel immense pride. She was the joy of my life, but she impacted so many others, brightening the lives of everyone lucky enough to know her. Katie was vibrant and full of life: happy, hardworking, fun-loving, honest, funny, charming and deeply trustworthy. She was very generous in sharing of her time, talent and money helping others. She was so selfless.

Our bond grew into something far beyond that of parent and child. She was, without question, one of my closest friends. She proudly told her friends that I was her best friend. In one of our intimate moments, she told me I was her compass -and now, she is mine. Guiding me still, with the light she left behind. During the final three months we were blessed to spend with her, we shared many moments of deep faith.

Through our daily prayers, rosary, Mass, and receiving Communion, together we found strength and solace in God's loving presence - a truly beautiful experience of God’s infinite love and grace. Even when she was in great pain, she would remind us when it was time to pray. Katie showed so much strength and courage most of us can only dream of. 

Friends and family, your prayers lifted us, and through them, the Lord gifted Katie and us a sacred time of love, faith, and comfort stronger than the pain. So whenever we hug you, know it’s Katie’s spirit embracing you too, saying, thank you and I love you.

Katie’s sister, Sarah

I always imagined I’d have many opportunities to honor my sister Katie. But I never expected this to be my one shot. So I want to be very specific, because while there is so much I could say, there are certain things that, in my world, I can attribute to no one else but her.

  • She had long, thin fingers with nails filed all the way down, and perfect posture, as if tailor-made to play piano as beautifully as she did.

  • She had a tiny eye twitch that looked like a wink, adding unintentional charm.

  • Her smile, with teeth that stuck out just enough to take notice, could lift the weight of a bad day.

  • I’ve never seen anyone else manage to sleep so flawlessly. She was basically a model, even in her sleep.

  • She was glamorously type B. A person whose apartment felt like a vintage shop, with clothes and decor spilled everywhere.

  • She was chronically online, the first to know everything, and somehow already tired of whatever I’d just sent her.

  • She never had to chase friendship. It found her easily, and she gave each one her generous heart.

The unique things I can attribute to Katie are endless. And in these two long, aching months without her, the smallest things stop me cold, reminding me, over and over, that I’ll never have her kind of magic in my life again.

I am a year and a half older than Katie, but we were raised like twins. Growing up together gave me a front-row seat to her life and cast me as protector, foil and secret-keeper all at once. Our origin stories are intertwined, sisters by blood and friends by choice.

People frequently compared us, and — spoiler alert — I never came out on top. I was told often, and a little too freely, that she was kinder, smarter and all-around more enjoyable to be with. But it never bothered me. I agreed completely. My sister was wholly deserving of all the admiration she received.  And watching her do everything better was so satisfying.

That is what I grieve most. All the lives I’ll never watch her live. Lives I can’t even imagine, because she dreamed bigger than my biggest dreams. What she achieved in 34 years, I could never have charted. I’ll never know all the things she so deeply deserved the chance to do.

There is no trade I wouldn’t make for her to have it all. But the heartbreaking fact is: she already made that trade. Her diagnosis pushed me to get screened early. And because of that, my own breast cancer was caught at a treatable stage last year. I can never fully reconcile the fact that I am here because she is not.

We had so many plans for the future. Now, when I look ahead, I feel the hollow space where she should be.

I’ll never know what it’s like to be:
45, comparing gray hairs and wrinkles
65, plotting to move closer for retirement
75, learning some silly hobby together

And yet, I am grateful.

Because I do know what it’s like to be:
7 and 9, watching The Parent Trap on mute while we recite the lines
15 and 17, driving around together with my fresh driver’s license
32 and 34, painting her apartment for the second time

I know our bond is strong enough to carry me through however many days I have to live without her. I will lose her over and over, but I will find her just as often. In every moment of indecision, letting her guide me as she always would have. In my travels to places I know she hoped to see. And in the mirror, I’ll see her age in parts of my own reflection.

Katie chose to spend her final months privately, at home with me and our parents. What we made of that time together is the greatest achievement of my life. I don’t get to have her for all of my days. What matters most is that she could count on me all of hers, her lifelong companion. I knew and loved every version of her she ever was and she made it so, so easy to do.

Katie was herself until the very end and we all know she loved food. Keeping the house stocked with joyful snacks became my mission. We shared her favorite Filipino dishes made by my parents, Easy Mac, a full Cheesecake Factory cheesecake flight. She even enjoyed one last crawfish season.

But I thought you’d like to hear what she requested, again and again:

  • Jello, specifically lime

  • Shake Shack’s black and white milkshake

  • Boxed juice. Tangerine, never plain orange

  • Rice Krispie treats

And her last meal, which we shared together, was a plate of Totino’s pizza rolls. And it was delicious.

Katie’s friend, Clara

Hello everyone, my name is Clara and these are some words and thoughts from Amanda, Kerry and myself, who all knew Katie from growing up together in New Orleans.

Since I first met Katie in Ms. Dumas’ 5th grade class, she always had that unhinged energy in the best possible way. Her magnetic spirit and larger-than-life personality made even the ordinary moments unforgettable. Whether she was belting all the lyrics to Usher’s Confessions album on the bus, dancing fearlessly at our sockhops or flawlessly quoting pop culture, there was never a dull moment with Katie. She even made our frequent trips to our neighborhood Chinese restaurant, China Orchid, hilariously entertaining. “General Tsao? More like General wow!” She would rave about the chicken. We should’ve known then she would go on to have a successful career in advertising. 

Katie ended up moving away our freshman year of high school after Hurricane Katrina but, despite the miles and years that followed, we all stayed close. We visited each other in our various cities and when we weren’t physically together, we messaged frequently on our group text message “Buddie$4$lyfe.” Katie was always the first to respond, even if it was just emojis, no matter the time of day. She was the type of friend who, even after long stretches apart, when you were finally reunited, it felt like no time had passed at all. Katie struck the perfect and delicate balance between being your biggest hype woman and delivering comedic honesty in the way that only a true friend can. She once told me brown wasn’t my best color but more often she was cheering us all on and declaring us iconic queens.

There is something really special about those childhood friendships that continue into adulthood- those people who have seen you at your most awkward phases of life and still love you unconditionally. Katie’s friendship was a constant through those many years, despite the fact that she was probably always a lot cooler than us.

Katie had a remarkable gift for bringing people together. Even during our last girls’ trip to New York, she reunited us with many of our middle school classmates. She’s also responsible for connecting me with my now husband who she introduced me to when I was visiting her for SXSW 12 years ago. So I have Katie to thank for gifting me two soulmates.

The last time my husband and I saw Katie was for her Carnegie Hall performance. We had one night left in town, and even though Katie wasn’t feeling her best, she told us to come over to visit before we left the next day. It was the perfect last memory of Katie- we snuggled in her hotel bed with her and her dog Roofus, watched hours of Law and Order SVU re-runs and ordered Chinese takeout. We have decided to celebrate a “Katie day” every year now, where we order “General wow”, watch SVU re-runs and go around to all the spots in Austin Katie took us to when she first brought us together.

In the words of the Beyoncé Renaissance album that was forever on repeat anytime we visited her New York apartment, she’s “too classy for this world”. Katie lived each day with unapologetic authenticity. Let’s celebrate her incredible life and the legacy she’s left in the many lives she’s touched. We are forever grateful for your friendship and the laughter and memories we’ve shared. We love you FOREVER.

Your buddies$4life

Katie’s friend, Michael

Katie Faith Tiambeng was—and still is—the best friend I’ve ever had.  She was a light. Brilliant, hilarious, stylish, kind, and insanely talented.

 She came to our performing and visual arts high school in Dallas in 2005 as a Katrina refugee from New Orleans. But you’d hardly know that. Because Faith, as we all called her then, never chose to be a victim. Instead, she focused her attention outward on others.  She’d pick me up in her Sienna van 30 miles out of her way just because I said I wanted Sonic, or spend her lunch break trying to teach me the circle of fifths for AP music theory.  She was an expert at hyping people up—finding joy in celebrating even the smallest of their victories, or alleviating stress by gently tapping your hand and saying “that’s okayyy” while making this face.  She basically was the sunglasses emoji.  

I remember we went to dinner once, she took one look at my shirt and said “buffalo plaid??? oh my gawd,  I see you” and you did just immediately feel seen, safe, and supported with Faith.  But beyond that, I still think her most impressive quality was how she handled challenges in her own life. She rolled her eyes at them, as if the idea of anything stopping her was a joke.  She breezed through difficulty with a smile, and for her, anything was possible.

 I was fortunate to stay close with Faith as she was unleashed on the world. From graduating UT early and working at a startup in Austin, to copywriting for GAP in San Francisco, to attending a prestigious ad school in Virginia, to landing at The New York Times, buying a home here in Brooklyn, and performing at Carnegie Hall, she packed more life into 34 years than most could in a century.  And she did it fully on her terms.

Faith took on cancer the same way she did with everything else: boldly, with humor, refusing to let it break her spirit.  As it progressed, she still made it seem like the minutiae of my life were paramount to her, and cancer was barely relevant. The week before she passed, she texted me an update about her declining health in the last conversation we would have. In her words, she described the situation as “It’s just so lol”.  That’s who Faith was.  And that never changed.

I owe a lot of who I am to Faith, and I will always strive to be more like her.  I want to champion others the way she did, giving them that gentle boost of confidence that Faith always gave me.  I’ll remember to laugh in the face of challenges, and move through them with her same grace.  And I hope you all can reflect on the impact she had on you as well.  Because by embracing that, she will always be with you, cheering you on.

Katie’s friend, Emily

Hello, everyone. I’m Emily, and Katie was my best friend. But as we’ve already heard, Katie was a lot of people’s best friend. And that’s because Katie was the kind of person who moved through life collecting friends everywhere she went. 

It didn’t matter if you were an 80 year old woman in her apartment building or her piano instructor, you wanted to be friends with her. Whether you met in elementary school, in a weird grad school program (guilty), or you were her short lived therapist who started asking Katie for advice, you were glad to have Katie in your life. 

But for someone who was always surrounded by friends, she was also deeply private and fiercely independent. A paradox. And as I’ve been reflecting on Katie’s amazing life, I’ve realized that everything about her was a paradox. 

  • Katie was born and raised in New Orleans and proud of it, but at the end of the day, she was a quintessential New Yorker, stomping around town in her signature clogs and impeccable fashion as she took in every Broadway show, opera, and museum. 

  • Katie was beautiful. Your eye couldn’t help but be drawn to her in a photo, but there was nothing she loved more than opening up her camera and hyping up her friends as she did anything to “get the shot.” One time, she went so far as to tread water and hold her phone above her head as she attempted to get a very okay photo of me in a dark cave in the Philippines. But get the shot, she did. 

  • Katie was the most generous person with her time and her money, and her generosity coupled with her amazing taste meant that she gave the best gifts. Once, she gave us a sous vide cooker just because she’d been watching a lot of Top Chef. Another time, a purse I’d regretted not buying, and she found it deep on ebay years later and remembered me. Nearly all of my most complimented wardrobe pieces came from Katie just because, but that incredible generosity ended the moment she sat down at the dinner table. Because there was nothing Katie hated more than sharing food – which is really hard to do in a town where every restaurant is obsessed with small plates for the table. And that’s probably why we almost always ate at diners. 

  • Katie had exacting standards for pasta and could sniff out a bullshit Italian restaurant from a mile away, but when it comes to Italy’s other greatest culinary export, pizza, I don’t think she’ll mind me telling you all that she was running a scam on Domino’s for the better part of a decade. But in her defense, they always did put too much sauce on her pizza, and she did deserve a free one. And as someone who ate a lot of Domino’s pizzas with her, she was right, it really is pretty good. 

  • Katie was the most welcoming person. She would offer up her couch to anyone who needed a place to stay, and that was honestly a pretty big sacrifice because she preferred sleeping on the couch to her own bed. And when the pandemic rolled around, Katie invited my then boyfriend of only nine months to stay with us. None of us could have predicted that we’d spend a year trapped inside a 900 square foot apartment together, but Katie welcomed Jon into our home with open arms. But as welcoming as she was, she preferred her own company over anyone else’s. Katie’s favorite thing to do was treating herself to a good “Me Day,” because in her own words, “no one is more fun to hang out with than me.” And I can’t help but agree. 

  • Katie could be incredibly sophisticated. When I asked her what she would be playing at Carnegie Hall, she said “a sonata by Sergei Prokofiev” like I would have any idea who or what she was talking about. But for being so refined in her music taste, she watched some absolutely trash TV. In fact, I’m fairly certain she’s the only person to ever go home after their performance at Carnegie Hall and watch seven hours of 90 Day Fiance. And at one point during the pandemic, she watched so many shows about obesity that I’m confident she could have performed gastric bypass surgery on you if you needed her to. 

  • Katie was a writer, and at any given time, she was employed by no less than three companies to write copy for them. And yet, I do not know if Katie knew how to write in the English language because she exclusively texted in sunglasses emojis. The occasional tongue emoji. But mostly the sunglasses. 

  • And speaking of Katie’s phone habits, this one really confounds me. Katie was always so incredibly present. When she was with you, she was with you, and her phone was put away. But she somehow managed to find the time to like every post on Instagram, keep up with every new development in the ongoing Brittney Spears discourse on Twitter, reach level 16,467 in the mobile game Gardenscapes (that’s not an exaggeration, I checked the app), and be the funniest person in every group chat. 

  • But most confounding of all, and something that I’m sure most of us will wonder about for the rest of our lives, is how someone who was so full of life, was given not nearly enough life to live. 

But what I do know is that in the face of an absolutely devastating diagnosis, Katie got busy living. In the past three and a half years, she bought and renovated an apartment in Brooklyn, staged a coup against the co-op president, adopted her beloved dog Roofus, she got even hotter, she traveled to eight countries, played at Carnegie Hall, joined the Krewe of Iris at Mardi Gras, and perhaps most astounding of all, in the past few years, Katie somehow became an even better friend. 

She treated your problems with more seriousness than she treated her own. She celebrated your wins with so much joy even as she was suffering so much loss. And she truly made every moment more fun and more beautiful. 

I will be forever grateful that I had Katie. My life is so much better because she was in it, and I know that I, and everyone else here, will miss her til our own dying days. Katie, you were the very best.

Thank you.