The housing crash has created many new careers, but few as imaginative as the one Martin Barry Silverberg chose: an Elvis impersonator performing weddings.

Silverberg, a former mortgage broker who went by the stage name Marty Barry, died Wednesday at a clinic in Bogotá, Colombia, where he was pursuing an alternative treatment for cancer. The Hollywood resident was 54.

``He sang just like Elvis, danced just like Elvis -- he didn't just look like Elvis,'' said Silverberg's daughter, Laura Powell of Hollywood. ``I called him Dad, but all his friends called him Elvis as a nickname.''

Silverberg was born and raised in Rockaway Beach, N.Y., where he worked as a lifeguard in his youth. As an adult he founded a modeling agency. There he met his future wife, Tracey Broussard, who came by the agency to support her roommate, an aspiring model.

The couple married 24 years ago, and moved to Hollywood about four years later.

For more than two decades, Silverberg had a successful career as a mortgage broker and worked as an Elvis impersonator on weekends. He was also ready to channel Elvis for those in need. In 2005 he described to The Sun Sentinel how he came to perform and hand out teddy bears for a charity benefiting seriously ill and developmentally disabled children.

But last year his mortgage work began to dry up, and he needed new full-time employment. He turned into Elvis around the clock, and in 2009 was ordained as a minister of the Church of Spiritual Humanism. Now he could preside at wedding ceremonies, as well as sing and gyrate at them. He also performed at bar mitzvahs.

``He'd been doing Elvis since he was 18 years old, but he didn't do it professionally, full-time, until he had more time on his hands,'' Powell said.

His brother-in-law, Isaac Aroshas of Boca Raton, helped Silverberg with the technical aspects of performing. ``He liked to see people in front of him smiling ear to ear and dancing to the rhythm,'' Aroshas said.

But his children saw a completely different persona.

``He was the best,'' said Powell. ``He would always take us on beach days, millions of vacations. He gave us advice. He was an extremely positive force. If you got down he would say, `Push through it, you can do it.' ''

In addition to his wife and daughter, Silverberg is survived by two sons, Max, 16, and Sam, 13. Services were held.