While promoting his Lifetime movie People Presents: Once Upon a Main Street, actor Patrick Duffy revealed that three years after losing his wife to cancer, he had found love again.
“I’m in an incredibly happy relationship,” he told PEOPLE. “I never thought for a minute this would happen again. I never thought I’d feel this way again.”
Duffy is best known for playing Bobby Ewing on the TV drama Dallas, which ran from 1978-1991. He reprised his role in the TNT reboot of the show from 2012-2014.
The woman he found love with? Happy Days actress Linda Purl.
Purl had a main role in Season 10 of the sitcom, playing Fonzie’s girlfriend Ashley Pfister. Coincidentally, Linda also played a character named Gloria in Season 2, who was Richie’s on-and-off girlfriend for a few episodes.
https://twitter.com/GroovyHistory/status/929770917001129987
Purl and Duffy have been casual friends for years and during the pandemic, they were in a group text with several other mutual friends. Over time, more and more people stopped replying and it was just the two of them and feelings were growing.
Duffy said, “I loaded up my car and drove 20 hours and ended up on her doorstep just to see if it was real. We haven’t been apart since.”
The first social media post of them together was actually way back on August 22.
View this post on Instagram
Patrick told PEOPLE that he’d gotten used to his life as a widower, so falling in love, especially during a pandemic was completely unexpected.
A few weeks after he went public with their relationship, he is gushing over his new lady love once again. Since they have both been in love before, he says he doesn’t feel like a giddy teenager in love.
“We’re not covering any ground that has not been trodden in both our lives for years and years,” he told Page Six. “For me, it’s not a do-over, it’s a do-again because the first one was perfect and this one is also perfect. We get a do-again, but we’re not teenagers so we kind of enter it knowing what’s expected and what to give and to respect each other’s history and individualism. It’s worked out, I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
And the feeling is mutual.
Purl recently shared a photo on social media with the caption, “Grateful for this beautiful soul.”
Check it out below.
View this post on Instagram