Published May 3, 2026

Actor Patrick Duffy, Who Lost Wife To Cancer 9 Years Ago, Found Love Again With ‘Happy Days’ Star Linda Purl While Bonding Over ‘Poetry, Music & Spiritual Thoughts’ On Zoom

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Finding Love Again

Patrick Duffy lost his wife to cancer in 2017, but later found love with Linda Purl of “Happy Days” during hours-long nightly Zoom calls in the COVID-19 pandemic. They recently reflected on how those conversations slowly turned into love.
Duffy’s late wife Carlyn Rosser, who he married in 1974, passed away in January 2017 after a battle with cancer at 77. The couple had two sons together.
Grief is a difficult, truly personal process, something Duffy has shown. Some find solace in vulnerability and sharing how they feel with others.
While working through grief and vulnerable tackling of the emotions that accompany it, some find tools like therapy to be helpful.
Support groups can also be a benefit for those who are feeling isolated in their feelings of grief. Faith can also be a powerful coping mechanism for some.Whichever methods of support you look for after cancer loss, you should know that there is no correct way to grieve. There is no perfect timeline for grieving, either.

Nine years have gone by since 77-year-old actor Patrick Duffy’s wife Carlyn Rosser, who he wed in 1974, passed away from cancer. Despite enduring such a profound loss, Duffy, who played Bobby Ewing on soap opera “Dallas,” has since developed a loving relationship with “Happy Days” star Linda Purl, 70—whom he reconnected with in a group chat, and ultimately fell in love on nightly Zoom video calls during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

In a recent heartfelt interview with Yahoo, Duffy recounted driving 1,500 miles to meet Purl person after referring to when he stepped out of his car on arrival, “There we were. It was do-or-die at that moment. We looked at each other for a while, then I asked her if I could kiss her, and she said yes. The garage door opened, I pulled my little Prius in — and we’ve never been apart.”

Purl, who held up a welcome sign for Duffy on his arrival, told Yahoo, admitted the weeks leading up to their big kiss, allowed them to connect deeply.

“It was a lonely time by default, because the world had gone away. So it became a philosophical time,” Purl said.

“We just fell into conversation and over six weeks, it deepened to poetry, music and spiritual thoughts.”

Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl pictured on August 21, 2025 (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

Duffy, who now resides in Los Angeles with Purl and enjoyed two to three-hour long calls with Purl prior to their life-changing visit, noted, “I never told anybody, even my children, that I wrote poems.”

He continued, telling Yahoo, “We discovered each other without going through that awkward phase of your third lunch or dinner … where you’re at the doorstep [wondering], do you kiss and invite yourself in? None of that had to happen.”

Purl also addressed how they body have a “freedom of … perspective” after life experience taught them to “choose joy.”

As for how life is living together, Duffy told Yahoo, “We love mornings together. We pass in the house for the first couple of hours as we go about our daily rituals.”

Duffy makes sure to prioritize his Buddhist faith by chanting in the mornings while Purl takes part in her preferred exercise activities.

They also enjoy cooking together, limiting their consumption of news, and relaxing together at the end of the day.

Duffy and Purl, who have chosen to share their “Duffy’s Dough” business equally, also admit they don’t think of being in their 70s as “golden” years.

Instead, Duffy explained, “We have a golden life. We’ve had golden careers. We’re excited and happy. It’s not pewter years.”

Love After Loss

Patrick Duffy, who often shares entertaining videos on social media with Purl promoting their “Duffys Dough” products, previously shared a fortunate life with his late wife Rosser, whom he married back in 1974.

The actor, who shares two sons with Rosser, was heartbroken when she passed away at age 77 from cancer in January 2017– so much so that he couldn’t fathom the thought of finding love after her.

In an earlier interview with Closer magazine, Duffy revealed he knew it [Rosser and his relationship] was forever from the time they met.

Duffy told the celeb news outlet, “I was an immature college graduate touring as narrator with this dance production, and she was a beautiful ballerina 10 years older. We met on the tour bus and that was it– for life.”

After Rosser passed away, Duffy was open regarding how he was affected by the loss, telling Closer, “I know what she would expect of me, and I try and live up to that. I feel close to her all the time, [but] what I miss most is her touch.”

“I still consider myself a married man,” Duffy said in 2019, showing us how grieving is an ongoing process, and that it’s best to have patience within yourself as you process your emotions after losing a loved one to cancer.

However, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Duffy and Purl’s mutual friends initiated a group text to bring to stay in touch throughout the new times of social distancing.

That group chat brought Duffy and Purl back into each other’s orbit, and once he realized their connection had grown beyond friendship, he decided to drive to her, where they quarantined together.

“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,” he told People magazine.

“I never thought I’d feel this way again,” Duffy admitted, noting that he thinks his wife would be happy for him. “I feel quite honestly, that it is keeping with the desires of my wife, the fact that we are intended to be happy.”

He concluded, “So when it’s offered, think about it, do whatever you do, but don’t let it pass you up if it’s the right thing.”

Dating After Cancer; Getting Intimate with the New You

If you are dealing with the loss of a loved one, or from any other mental health-related issue, check out SurvivorNet’s resources on taking care of yourself.

How Support Makes a Difference

Whether you’re battling cancer, being a caretaker, or coping with losing a loved one, it’s important that everyone involved in a cancer journey receive the support they need. Support groups, or connecting with just one other person, can make a huge difference in helping someone feel less alone during a difficult time.

Connecting with those who have gone through shared experiences can really make an impact in how you cope as well as move forward with your life. For Doug Wendt, who lost his wife Alice to ovarian cancer, says he learned an important lesson in the difference between “moving on” and “moving forward” after losing a spouse to cancer.

“We’re never gonna move on, I don’t even think I want to move on, but I do want to move forward,” Doug told SurvivorNet in a previous interview.

“That’s an important distinction and I encourage anybody who goes through this journey as a caregiver and then has to face loss, to think very carefully about how to move forward.”

Doug Wendt, Who Lost His Wife To Ovarian Cancer, On How He Cope With Her Passing

How to Combat Loneliness

Dr. Kelsey Crowe is the founder of Empathy Bootcamp, a company that offers courses to teach people about empathy intelligence.

Generally, she believes people should give help without waiting to be asked like she promotes in her book “There Is No Good Card for This: What To Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love.” But Dr. Crowe admits that COVID-19 forced us to address loneliness in a different way.

“In this time of a pandemic, we, as people in need, have to figure out how to ask for help,” she told SurvivorNet in an earlier conversation. “But it doesn’t always have to be common kinds of help that come up like cooking or child care ’cause not everyone’s a cook, not everyone likes kids.”

As a breast cancer survivor, she knows the cancer journey can be isolating.

“A lot of what we need is not only company, but it’s being noticed,” she said. “People can forget to notice us because the pandemic has made us so insular, so we have to help people get very specific about how to notice us.”

Dr. Crowe created the “empathy menu” to help people address these kinds of emotional needs. The menu suggests ways to help people in need based upon personality type.

“That menu has categories like the ‘work horse’ that might run errands, or the ‘creative type’ that might make something whether its a poem or a needlepoint, or the ‘musician’ that would send along their favorite playlist songs or the joker that can send funny clips,” she said.

Treating Depression After a Cancer Diagnosis

The “menu” is designed to play into people’s strengths. It gives a certain type of person concrete things they can do to support someone facing hardship.

Dr. Crowe recommends that people dealing with a cancer diagnosis actively try to identify the strengths of the people within their support system and get creative about asking them to do little things to make them feel less lonely.

“So if you have a friend who loves music you might have to just say, ‘hey man, would you mind putting together a playlist for me,'” she said. “And the best thing about it is this person likes to do that.”

She says asking for help in specific ways is often better than just saying, “I’m lonely” because people can be overwhelmed by the gravity of this statement.

“If we just say I’m really lonely, people feel then like ‘oh my god, so now I have to hang out with you a lot’ and they may not feel able to do it for pandemic reasons or because they’re very busy,” she said. “It’s a lot less overwhelming and a lot more actionable if you find somebody’s empathy strength… and ask them for that gift.”

So if you’re a cancer patient or just feeling lonely, try thinking creatively. Ask your artistic friend if they have time to paint you a picture of your favorite beach. Ask your movie-loving sister to do an Amazon watch party for the new film you’ve been dying to see.

There’s no right or wrong answers, but it’s important to help people help you when you’re dealing with something like cancer that can already feel so isolating especially during a pandemic.