Duane “Dog The Bounty Hunter” Chapman said “I do” all over again on Sept. 2, 2021. The 68-year-old television personality got married for the sixth time, and this time, he tied the knot with Francie Frane. Duane and Francie got engaged in May 2020, roughly ten months after Duane’s wife Beth Chapman died of throat cancer. Following Beth’s death, Duane found solace with Francie, who had also experienced the loss of her husband.
Duane has had 12 children, 11 of whom came from his marriages to Beth and four women prior that all ended in divorce. HollywoodLife has rounded up everything there is to know about Duane’s five marriages, as well as his romance with Francie. Learn more below!
La Fonda Sue Honeycutt
Duane’s first marriage was to La Fonda Sue Honeycutt. The pair tied the knot in Texas on April 1, 1972, when Duane was 19 years old and La Fonda was 20 years old. Their marriage lasted until October 27, 1977, when La Fonda filed for divorce after Duane was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to five years in a Texas prison. While married, Duane and La Fonda welcomed two sons: Duane Lee Chapman Jr., 48, and Leland Blane Chapman, 44, who lived with their father after his prison release and eventually appeared on Dog the Bounty Hunter.
Anne M. Tegnell
Shortly after Duane was released from prison on parole after two years, he got married to Anne Tegnell. The nuptials took place on August 22, 1979 in Colorado. Duane and Anne welcomed their first child, son Zebadiah Chapman on January 1, 1980, but he died nearly a month later. They had a second child, Wesley Chapman, now 40, but divorced afterwards. However, Duane and Anne eventually reunited briefly to have a third child, son James Chapman, 39.
Lyssa Rae Brittain
Duane was married for a third time in 1982 to Lyssa Rae Brittain. Duane and Lyssa had met each other in a bar just days prior to their wedding. In his 2007 autobiography You Can Run But You Can’t Hide, Duane reportedly claimed that he offered Lyssa $1,000 to have his child. She agreed, and during their nine years of marriage they had three kids together: daughter Barbara Katie Chapman, who died at 23 years old in a car accident in 2006, son Tucker Dee Chapman, 37, and daughter Lyssa Rae Chapman, 34. Lyssa Rae appeared in six seasons of her father’s A&E reality show.
Tawney Marie
Wedding No. 4 for Duane was with Tawney Marie. The couple reportedly met in 1988 when Duane arrested her for drug possession charges, and she was later hired as his secretary. They became husband and wife in 1992, but separated in 1994 and officially divorced eight years later. Duane and Tawney had no children together, and the famed bounty hunter reportedly said in his autobiography that the marriage “was a disaster from the start.”
Beth Smith
Duane’s most well-known marriage was to Beth Smith. The two were on-and-off for nearly a decade until they finally tied the knot on May 20, 2006 in Hawaii. Beth explained how the two met in a 2011 interview with Rosie O’Donnell on The Rosie Show. “I was in jail and…I called him for a bond,” she told the comedian. “He went out and posted my bond but he sent it out on the bus. So I ended up sitting in jail for 12 hours more.” Duane and Beth had a blissful marriage together that produced two children: Bonnie Joanne Chapman, 22, and Garry Chapman, 20. In addition, Duane became a father via adoption to Beth’s 28-year-old daughter Cecily Barmore-Chapman, whom she shared with her ex-husband.
Sadly, Beth passed away on June 26, 2019 at the age of 51 following a two-year battle with stage II throat cancer. Since Beth’s death, Duane has continued to honor his late wife on bittersweet dates. In May 2020, Duane marked what would have been the pair’s 14th wedding anniversary with a heartfelt tribute he posted to Instagram. “She said Big Daddy your going to be so sad when I am not here on our next anniversary why did she have to be so right??” Duane wrote on the post, which featured a photo of the couple wrapping their arms around one another.
Francie Frane
Following Beth’s tragic death, Duane found love again with Colorado rancher Francie Frane. The two were brought together over shared tragedy, as Duane called Francie’s husband Bob to do some landscaping work on the family property, but learned that Bob passed away just a few months before Beth. “We hooked up on the phone and started talking to each other, crying and consoling each other. And then one thing led to another,” Duane said in May 2020. “It’s just incredible that I’ve been able to meet someone like her.” The two began dating in the spring of 2020, and that May, they got engaged.
After the couple shared the big news, Duane’s family, including daughters Lyssa and Bonnie, responded with joy about the engagement. And now, they’re officially married!