For three years after losing his wife, Patrick Duffy had no reason to imagine another great romance waiting for him.
He had already lived the kind of love story many people spend their entire lives hoping to find. The Dallas star had been married to ballet dancer Carlyn Rosser for 43 years, raised two sons with her and built a life that stretched across nearly his entire adult existence. When Carlyn died in 2017, Duffy was devastated, and the idea that another woman might someday occupy such an intimate place in his life seemed almost impossible.
“I never thought for a minute this would happen again,” he would eventually admit. “I never thought I’d feel this way again.” (People.com)
Then, in the strange isolation of 2020, an old acquaintance reappeared.
Her name was Linda Purl.
They lived more than a thousand miles apart. They couldn’t go on ordinary dates. They couldn’t casually meet for dinner and see where the evening went. Instead, night after night, they sat in front of their computers and talked.
Then one evening, as Patrick prepared to end another call, three words slipped out almost automatically.
“I love you.”
He clicked off the call.
And immediately realized what he had done.
“Oh my God,” he thought. “What did I just say?” (BroadwayWorld)
Those three accidental words would change both of their lives.
They Had Known Each Other for Years — but There Had Never Been a Romance
The viral version of Patrick and Linda’s story sometimes makes it sound as though they had spent decades as intimate friends secretly waiting for the right moment.
The reality is a little different — and arguably more romantic.
They had known each other casually for years.
Their paths first crossed around 2000 through mutual friend and actor Richard Thomas. Linda was in London, where Thomas and Patrick were appearing in the West End production of Art, and she stopped by to see her friend. That brought her into Patrick’s orbit.
There was no grand romantic beginning.
They were acquaintances.
Years later, they crossed paths again in Los Angeles and exchanged contact information. There were occasional friendly messages, but still nothing suggesting that either imagined a future together. (People.com)
Both had already lived complicated, full romantic lives.
Linda had been married four times. Patrick, meanwhile, had spent more than four decades with one woman.
And losing her had changed him.
Patrick Had Been Married to Carlyn Since 1974
Patrick met Carlyn Rosser long before audiences knew him as Bobby Ewing.
She was a professional ballet dancer, older than Patrick, and their connection became the defining romantic relationship of his life.
They married in 1974.
Two sons followed, Padraic and Conor, and Carlyn remained beside Patrick as his career transformed him from a working actor into one of television’s most recognizable leading men.
When Dallas became an international phenomenon, millions of viewers became invested in Bobby Ewing’s turbulent relationship with Pamela Barnes.
Offscreen, however, Patrick had something considerably steadier waiting at home.
Carlyn.
Their marriage lasted until her death in January 2017. She was 77. (People.com)
Patrick suddenly found himself facing a version of life he had not planned for.
Widowhood.
“I Thought I Was Content”
Grief did not immediately send Patrick looking for another relationship.
Quite the opposite.
As he later explained, he believed the romantic chapter of his life had simply ended.
By the time he reached 70, Patrick could look backward and see an extraordinary marriage behind him. He had loved someone deeply, built a family and spent more than four decades beside her.
“I thought I was content,” he later said.
But eventually he discovered that contentment and happiness were not necessarily identical.
It would take Linda to show him the difference.
For her part, Linda wasn’t waiting for a romance either.
The Happy Days and Matlock actress had built a full life of her own. After four marriages, she had little expectation that another major life partnership would suddenly appear.
“There’s no one surprised more than the two of us,” she later said of what happened. (Parade)
And then the world shut down.
A Group Text During Lockdown Changed Everything
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Patrick was largely isolated at his ranch in Oregon.
Linda was living with her dog in Colorado.
Their renewed connection initially existed within a group text involving several friends. As time passed, however, other people gradually stopped participating.
Patrick and Linda kept talking.
The messages became more frequent.
Then they started calling.
Eventually they discovered Zoom — something both later joked they had barely known existed before the pandemic. (Entertainment Tonight)
What might ordinarily have been a few dates became something much more unusual.
They talked for hours.
Every night.
Sometimes two hours.
Sometimes three.
And because there was nowhere to go and little else competing for their attention, they skipped much of the superficial stage of dating.
There was no restaurant to impress each other in.
No carefully planned evening.
No awkward question about whether someone should come inside afterward.
They simply talked.
Night After Night, Their Conversations Became More Intimate
At first, the conversations were light.
Then something shifted.
They talked about their histories, their previous relationships, their families and the lives they had already lived.
They listened to music together.
Patrick read poetry.
Sometimes they even ate dinner together through their screens despite being separated by more than a thousand miles.
Linda later remembered how the isolation of the pandemic created an unusual emotional environment.
“It was a lonely time by default, because the world had gone away,” she explained in 2026. “So it became a philosophical time.”
Over approximately six weeks, she said, their conversations deepened into discussions of “poetry, music and spiritual thoughts.” (Yahoo)
Patrick was revealing parts of himself he rarely showed anyone.
He even admitted that he wrote poetry — something he said he had never told anyone, including his children. (Yahoo)
Somewhere along the way, friendship had quietly stopped being friendship.
Neither had formally announced the change.
Until Patrick accidentally did.
“Okay, Bye-Bye, I Love You”
One night, Linda told Patrick she was tired and preparing to go to bed.
Their nightly call was ending like all the others.
Patrick said they would talk again the following evening.
Same time.
Then he signed off.
“Okay, bye-bye, I love you.”
Click.
The screen went dark.
And Patrick froze.
He had not planned it.
There had been no dramatic declaration or carefully prepared speech.
The words had simply come out.
“What did I just say?” he remembered thinking. “Oh my God.” (BroadwayWorld)
Linda had heard him perfectly.
Her reaction was essentially: Wait — what was that?
The three words could not be pulled back.
More importantly, neither of them wanted to pull them back.
“And that’s what started it,” Patrick later explained. “We literally fell in love 1300 miles apart.” (BroadwayWorld)
Suddenly their nightly calls were no longer conversations between two old friends.
They were falling in love.
The Next Night, Linda Put on Mascara — and Even Perfume
Something had changed by the following evening.
Linda prepared differently for their call.
She did her hair.
She put on mascara.
Then, despite knowing Patrick couldn’t possibly smell it through a computer screen, she put on perfume.
“I was very nervous,” she later admitted. (Yahoo)
It is such a wonderfully ordinary detail.
Two veteran actors who had spent decades performing in front of cameras suddenly found themselves nervous about a Zoom date.
But eventually screens weren’t enough.
The pandemic could keep them physically separated.
It couldn’t answer the question both were beginning to ask.
Was this connection real when they were actually standing in the same room?
Patrick decided to find out.
He Got Into His Car and Drove Across the Country to Her
Patrick loaded his car.
Then he began driving.
Accounts have described the journey as roughly 1,300 to 1,500 miles and around 20 hours or more, from his home in Oregon to Linda in Colorado. What matters is that Patrick wasn’t driving across town for a first date.
He was crossing several states to find out whether the woman he had fallen in love with through a computer screen felt the same in person. (People.com)
Linda was waiting.
She had made him a welcome sign.
Patrick pulled up in his little Prius.
And suddenly there were no screens between them.
“There we were,” Patrick remembered in a 2026 interview. “It was do-or-die at that moment.”
They looked at each other.
Then Patrick asked whether he could kiss her.
Linda said yes.
“The garage door opened, I pulled my little Prius in — and we’ve never been apart.” (Yahoo)
That was nearly six years ago.
They are still together.
Patrick Never Saw Loving Linda as Replacing Carlyn
Finding love after losing a spouse can carry a complicated kind of guilt.
For Patrick, however, loving Linda did not require erasing Carlyn.
He has spoken openly about believing that his late wife would have wanted him to accept happiness if life offered it again.
“I feel, quite honestly, that it is keeping with the desires of my wife, the fact that we are intended to be happy,” Patrick explained.
His conclusion was simple: if happiness unexpectedly arrives and it feels right, “don’t let it pass you up.” (People.com)
Linda did not erase the 43 years that came before her.
She became the beginning of something new.
That distinction appears central to why their relationship worked.
Patrick was not trying to recreate his first marriage.
He had already lived that life.
At 71, he was discovering another one.
They Quickly Discovered That Late-Life Love Had Its Advantages
Patrick and Linda have often joked about how different falling in love later in life feels.
At their ages, there was considerably less mystery about who they were.
They had already built careers.
They knew their interests.
They knew their values.
They had survived marriages, divorces, parenthood, professional successes, disappointments and, in Patrick’s case, devastating loss.
“You’ve already overcome the whole prologue to a relationship,” Patrick once explained.
Instead of starting at the beginning, he said, it felt as though they were beginning in “the final lap towards the winning line.”
Linda saw another ingredient.
They laugh.
A lot.
“We laugh an inordinate amount of the time together,” she said.
The relationship that had begun with endless conversations remained rooted in actually enjoying each other’s company.
That would become particularly important because Patrick and Linda didn’t merely start dating.
They started working together too.
Their Real Romance Eventually Became an Onscreen One
In 2022, Patrick returned to The Bold and the Beautiful as Stephen Logan.
This time, Linda joined him.
The couple played romantic partners onscreen, turning their real-life chemistry into part of the soap opera.
Patrick immediately noticed how different the experience felt.
For the first time in his career, he could wake up with his costar, travel to work with her and return home with her afterward.
“The chemistry works, offstage and on,” he said.
Linda agreed.
Despite spending enormous amounts of time together, neither could identify some hidden downside.
When she asked Patrick whether he had found “the difficult” part of working together yet, his answer was one word:
“No.” (Entertainment Tonight)
Their professional partnership soon expanded beyond acting.
Then They Started a Business Together
One morning, Patrick made Linda sourdough pancakes.
The starter he used wasn’t something he had recently bought.
It had been part of his family since 1952, when his mother received it from a neighbor.
Linda immediately saw possibilities.
Eventually, they turned that family starter into Duffy’s Dough, a sourdough business they developed together. More recently, the couple expanded the project while directing profits toward charitable efforts including food pantries and Meals on Wheels. (People.com)
By 2026, they had sold their separate homes, combined their households and settled together in Los Angeles. (Yahoo)
The relationship that began on separate computer screens had become a shared home, shared work and shared business.
Yet one thing still hasn’t happened.
They haven’t married.
“We Already Feel Married”
For two people whose relationship appears so settled, the obvious question has followed them for years.
Will they marry?
Patrick hasn’t ruled it out.
But neither seems particularly concerned about making their commitment official through a wedding.
He has described his relationship with Linda as being as deep and meaningful as any relationship he has experienced. The pair have even joked that, in practical terms, they already feel married. (Yahoo)
Perhaps that makes sense.
Patrick spent 43 years married to Carlyn.
Linda has been married four times.
Neither needs a ceremony to understand what commitment looks like.
They live together.
They work together.
They travel together.
They built a business together.
And almost six years after Patrick drove across several states to discover whether their virtual romance could survive reality, they remain together.
At 77 and 71, They’re Still Choosing Each Other
Patrick is now 77.
Linda turned 71 in September 2026, recently making a rare solo appearance in Los Angeles around her birthday. (Page Six)
Their relationship, meanwhile, is approaching its sixth year.
In an April 2026 interview, they spoke less like two people still astonished by a pandemic romance and more like two people who had simply built a life.
“We have a golden life,” Patrick said. “We’ve had golden careers. We’re excited and happy.” (Yahoo)
That may be the most striking part of their story.
Patrick had already experienced a lifelong love.
Linda had already experienced marriages and divorces.
Neither was searching desperately for another relationship.
Neither expected the other.
Then the world shut down, two old acquaintances began talking, and an ordinary goodbye slipped out differently than Patrick intended.
“Okay, bye-bye, I love you.”
Three words.
One accidental confession.
And suddenly a man who believed that chapter of his life was finished found himself driving more than a thousand miles toward another beginning.
Patrick once admitted that before Linda, he believed he was content.
Now he understands the distinction.
Being content meant accepting the life he had.
Meeting Linda reminded him that even after devastating loss, life could still surprise him.
As Linda herself put it when reflecting on their unlikely romance:
“Life is full of surprises, both good and bad. Patrick and I weren’t looking for this. We didn’t expect it or see it coming.”
Then she offered the lesson their late-life love story had taught her:
“Don’t ever give up.”
For more heartwarming stories about unexpected turns in life, read about Michael Jackson’s youngest son Bigi stepping into the spotlight and the woman who uncovered her husband’s secret after he died.
