On May 4, 2020, less than a year after he lost his wife Beth Chapman to cancer, Duane “Dog” Chapman became engaged to his girlfriend Francie Frane.
The couple announced their proposal through an exclusive interview with The Sun. Dog popped the question in a candlelit room at his home in Colorado and Francie said it was completely unexpected.
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The announcement came as a surprise to fans, who had recently learned that Francie and Dog had only been dating a couple of months before going public in early April.
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Their road to finding each other is quite interesting and in a sit-down interview with Kevin Frazier from Entertainment Tonight, they told their love story.
Beth Chapman’s death was highly publicized and when she passed in June 2019 and Francie’s friend told her about it. Francie admitted she had never heard of Dog and Beth Chapman, but was moved by their story, seeing as she had lost her husband to cancer just six months prior.
The conversation ended there, but the next morning, Francie’s friend came to her and said, “Okay, you’re going to think this is nuts, but I have to tell you anyway, God just said to me that you’re going to meet Dog The Bounty Hunter and he’s going to use you guys in a huge way to change lives.”
Francie laughed it off. But a couple of months later, in August 2019, she listened to a voicemail left for her late husband Bob, who owned an excavating company in Colorado, where Dog has a home.
She had given her 8-year-old grandson the task of being in charge of Bob’s phone and had yet to answer any messages until she heard Dog leave a message for Bob. Dog actually said his name was Doug Chapman on the voicemail.
Francie felt the need to call him back because he clearly had no clue Bob had passed away, so she did.
She said, “So I called back and he answers the phone and I said to him, ‘I’m really sorry to tell you that my husband passed away a few months ago.’ So he starts balling [sic] and then I start crying. So then all of a sudden I hear him take this big, deep breath and he says, ‘My name’s not Doug, it’s Dog The Bounty Hunter.’“
Her jaw just about dropped to the floor, remembering what her girlfriend had told her just a couple months before.
Dog revealed he lost his wife, but of course Francie already knew that. They talked on the phone for over an hour and stayed in touch after that, meeting for coffee occasionally and being there for each other during the grieving process.
Eventually, their friendly feelings towards one another turned into something more, and now they’re getting married! The relationship might come as a surprise to fans, but it’s even more of a surprise to Francie.
She admitted, “I told everyone, my family, friends, everybody that I go to church with, I will never, ever be with anybody ever again.”
Dog has also echoed these sentiments, saying over and over again that he would never remarry. It must be love!
The biggest reason they bonded so quickly was because they are both mourning the love of their lives.
“We understood the pain that the other one was feeling and [in] those tough days and moments, we helped each other stand up,” Francie said. “We could cry with each other and talk about what we were feeling. We were able to walk alongside each other through the pain and heartbreak and it brought us together in this amazing way.”
It was really nice to see a smile that big on Dog’s face again. Watch the interview below.