Actor Patrick Swayze’s widow, Lisa, said some fans were angry with her for getting remarried years after her movie star husband passed away.
Lisa Niemi Swayze married the “Dirty Dancing” star in 1975 and remained with him until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2009. She then married Albert DePrisco in 2014, a move that she says was met with a lot of criticism from devoted Swayze fans.
“Yes, I got a lot of flack — it’s like, ‘How dare you.’ There are some pretty rabid Patrick fans out there who think I’m evil, just don’t like me because I was married to him,” Lisa said during a Monday appearance on the “Amy and T.J. Podcast.”
She added, “So there was a lot of flack that came on that, a lot of criticism, and you just learn to deal with it and move on. But it’s like — I was so tempted so many times to say, ‘Hey girlfriend, stand in my shoes, tell me about it. Go ahead — tell me just because I lost my husband that I don’t love him anymore.'”
“How could you say that? Ridiculous,” Lisa said.
The couple met during their teenage years, per People. Lisa was also an actress and continued working alongside her husband after they moved to New York City together.
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Lisa described how even though her husband of more than three decades is gone, she still believes their love is alive.
“Patrick is still with me. I still have a relationship with him; he’s physically not here, [but] every day he’s with me and I feel him there,” she said on the podcast. “What was really unusual was… I really fell in love with Albert, and it didn’t affect — it was interesting to see how it didn’t affect my love for Patrick one bit.”
“Just because you lose a loved one doesn’t mean you stop loving, and you don’t have that love to give,” Lisa said. “And I think Albert and I were fortunate to find someone to give that love to.”
She said her relationship with DePrisco, who is divorced, came down to good timing.
“If we had met before then, it wouldn’t have happened, but after three years we were about ready,” Lisa said. “We were introduced by longtime friends that we had both known for 30 years who vouched for the other person.”