Tammy Faye Messner, who as Tammy Faye Bakker helped her husband, Jim, build a multimillion-dollar evangelism empire and then watched it collapse in disgrace, died on Friday at the age of 65.

At left, Tammy Faye Messner and her then-husband, Jim Bakker, talked to their TV audience at their PTL ministry near Fort Mill, S.C., in 1986. "PTL" stood for "Praise the Lord" or "People that Love."