Still grieving. Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman broke down in tears when he opened up about life after his late wife, Beth Chapman, in a new interview.
“[With any] new experience that you have, you don’t know how you’re doing because you’ve never experienced it,” the 66-year-old told Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, July 10. “I have a lot of people who depend on me. All my supervisors said, ‘Dog, it’s time to man up.’ So I’m trying to man up.”
Beth died at Queen’s Medical Center in Hawaii on June 26. She succumbed to her battle with throat cancer at 51.
Before her passing, Duane was prepped by Beth on how to carry on without her. “For two to three years, she knew this might happen. So she would say, ‘Who is going to sit next to you?’ And I said, ‘No one.’ ‘Big Daddy, you better not let another girl take my place.’ I said, ‘I won’t,’” he recalled to ET through tears.
Beth first revealed her cancer diagnosis in a letter addressed to loved ones in September 2017. At the time, Us Weekly confirmed that she had stage II throat cancer.
“As most of you know I’ve spent a lifetime facing tests and challenges I didn’t see coming and certainly never expected,” the late A&E star previously wrote. “I’ve been dealt my share of unexpected blows over the course of my almost fifty years but nothing as serious as the one I heard from my doctors two weeks ago when they uttered those dreaded three words, ‘You have cancer.’ After months of a nagging cough, a routine checkup resulted in a diagnosis of stage II throat cancer. I have what is referred to as a T2 Tumor in my throat that is blocking my breathing. My doctors are suggesting immediate treatment and surgery before the disease progresses.”
Beth then noted that there was “no quick fix and no appealing options for treatment.”
Duane and Beth, who starred alongside their family in A&E’s Dog the Bounty Hunter series, wed in Hawaii May 2006. They shared daughter Bonnie Chapman, 20, and son Garry Chapman, 18.
Beth’s memory will be honored in a memorial service in Aurora, Colorado on Saturday, July 13. The ceremony, which will be held at the Heritage Christian Center, will be open to the public. The funeral is expected to run for two hours and will begin at 3 p.m. ET. For those who can’t attend, the occasion can be viewed through a livestream on WGNAmerica.com on Duane’s Facebook page.
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