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Two years after Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic death at the age of 39, there’s still a void in the lives of the men who loved her most – and once waged a bitter war in which both were adamant in laying claim to Anna’s infant daughter:

Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead.

“It’s still hard for me to watch video of Anna, to see pictures of her and to know that she’s gone,” Stern said in an exclusive interview with E! News.

“For at least a year after Anna Nicole’s death, I couldn’t concentrate,” Stern recalled. “I couldn’t even focus on something for more than a couple of minutes at a time… For a long time I just wanted to die, literally.”

While Smith’s personal life was tabloid fodder, the passing of her 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith, in September 2006 and the custody battle over Dannielynn dominated headlines of both celebrity gossip and real news organizations.

“I kind of feel like it’s my responsibility to try and undo what was done in the media to Anna after she passed,” Stern said. “I want her to be remembered fondly. I want her legacy to be who she was, not what was put out there by the media.”

The job of milking every last dollar out of polishing the image of Smith has also been taken up by Larry Birkhead, who was proven via DNA tests to be her baby daddy.

“One of my jobs in my personal life is to keep Anna’s image alive,” he said, adding that selling pics of being with his daughter is like being with Smith “all over again.”

“I think I see a little bit of money everything,” Birkhead said of Dannielynn’s resemblance to her mom, “and it’s really bittersweet because you have this person you lost, but then you have this pint-sized version of this person.”

Follow the jump for pics of the late Anna Nicole and her two loves