Patrick Duffy is giddy with delight when discussing his new love.
The “Dallas” star — who lost his wife of 34 years, Carlyn Rosser, to cancer in 2017 — started dating actress Linda Purl four months ago.
The clearly besotted Duffy, 71, told Page Six he doesn’t feel like teenager in love but rather a “knowledgeable teen.”
“We’re not covering any ground that has not been trodden in both our lives for years and years,” he explained of his relationship with the “Happy Days” actress.
“For me, it’s not a do-over, it’s a do-again because the first one was perfect and this one is also perfect. We get a do-again, but we’re not teenagers so we kind of enter it knowing what’s expected and what to give and to respect each other’s history and individualism. It’s worked out, I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
The actor says that his Buddhist faith helped him deal with his wife’s passing and also with the brutal murders of his parents in 1986 during an armed robbery of a tavern they owned in Boulder, Montana.
“Fundamental to all Buddhist philosophy is the eternity of life,” he explained, adding that his wife introduced him to the religion.
He has chanted twice daily for 49 years, and says: “It’s impossible to separate the philosophy of Buddhism from my life. But just so people know, just because I chant ‘Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō’ doesn’t mean I don’t like polishing off a bottle of wine or red meat.”
And that also includes celebrating Christmas.
“I have always been a Christmas fanatic, I was from year one. When my wife and I were first married, living in New York in the ’70s, we were so poor we would wrap our Christmas presents in the Sunday funnies because at least it was colored paper. We never gave up on the holiday.”
Duffy loves the holiday season so much he’s starring in the Lifetime Christmas movie “Once Upon a Main Street,” revealing that whenever he’s offered a Christmas movie he doesn’t even really read the script.
“I know what it is, I respect them, I respect them and their audience and when the phone rings I say, ‘Absolutely,'” he said.