Update: Ruth Samuelson on Housing Complex reports that Carol Joynt terminated the lease herself.

It’s been rumored for months now, but today, owner Carol Joynt announced on the restaurant’s Web site that Nathans will be closing at last call on Sunday, July 12, ending 40 years of service in Georgetown.  Last-minute efforts to save Nathans apparently did not work.

Writes Joynt:

After 40 years of serving millions of happy and loyal customers, and opening its doors 365 days of every year, Nathans will close at last call on Sunday, July 12. This ends an era of delicious, interesting and often outrageous moments at what Zagat called “the quintessential Georgetown saloon.”

We hope over the next week you will find the time to come in and enjoy a last drink and meal with us. We wish we could give it away, but economic reality is that we need your dollars. Also, if I may, I ask you to please be generous with the staff.

I do this with a heavy heart and much gratitude toward Nathans staff and customers.

On the site, Joynt says she has no further comment. But on her facebook page, the Nathans owner drops a hint on her future plans: “Read it all in “Innocent Spouse,” to be published by Crown Books!”

Innocent Spouse, it turns out, is Joynt’s forthcoming memoir. Folio Literary Management describes the book this way:

Journalist and former Larry King Live producer Carol Ross Joynt’s jaw-dropping debut memoir, INNOCENT SPOUSE recounts her attempt to pick up the pieces of her life when, after her husband’s sudden death, she discovers that he owed the IRS more than $2.5 million, and as his surviving spouse, she’s responsible for paying the debt…

I see a book tour in Joynt’s future, and Y&H will be the first in line to hear her unspool this tale.