ET exclusively sat down with Duane Chapman, who gets candid about his family's recent drama and relationship with his assistant.
Nearly eight months after Beth Chapman died, Duane "Dog" Chapman continues to mourn his beloved wife.
"Oh, I miss her," the Dog's Most Wanted star tells ET's Kevin Frazier in an exclusive interview. "Eight months, that's the worst part, it seems like yesterday and they say 'time heals all wounds.' No, it doesn’t."
Beth died last June after a battle with throat cancer, with Chapman sharing that he misses "her comments, her touch, her smell" the most. "Her encouragement, her, 'I am going to hire a real bounty hunter if you don't catch this guy,'" he continues. "Her teasing me, her [saying], 'We say the blessing before we eat.'"
Chapman hates to admit that she was his everything, "because I am such a macho, macho man. But she was the glue that held my family together. So now I got to redo it and restaple everybody -- and we are all kind of brawling right now."
The Chapman family has been going through their own ups and downs, with the reality star's daughter, Lyssa, arrested last month, and rumors circulating that Chapman was involved with his longtime assistant, Moon Angell.
"Well, the girls are very upset because of other girls I'd be looking at," he explains. "Or they may say, 'Dad, they just like you because you are Dog the Bounty Hunter. They don't like you because you are Dwayne or Dad.' The boys are like, 'Dad, you know, if you love them, if you like them, we are for you or whatever you decide.'"
During an appearance on The Dr. Oz Show earlier this month, Chapman asked Angell to marry him, before viewers discovered that it was a false proposal and she admitted that she did not want to be with him. But what is going on between the two?
"I am very lonesome," Chapman admits, before explaining that he's turned to his assistant because "she knew Beth." "And she talked about Beth constantly, 'Remember what Beth used to tell us,' and of course I would light right up when she'd say that. I was infatuated with a dream."
Chapman, however, insists that they are just friends. "She still works for me, and takes care of the finances," he says, adding, "I kind of embarrassed her a little bit and I shouldn't have."
"I swear on my mama and on Beth that [the Dr. Oz proposal] was not rehearsed," he says. "And you saw Dr. Oz was even like, 'Oh my god.' I knew I was gonna do it way before I done it, and I said, 'This will stop these rumors.'"
But would he have dated Angell if she wanted a relationship? "Yes, I am going to be honest with you, brother. Yeah, I think I would have because it was more accessible," he admits. Though things would have been tricky, he says, sharing that Angell has previously told him, "'No one will ever love you like Beth did. You better stop looking for that because there is no woman alive that will ever love you like that.'"
"When you lose a spouse, man or woman, you are looking for that again," he explains. "So you look for that and for someone to tell you that, it kind of stopped me dead in my tracks. I'm like, wow, so she's kind of cold-blooded. She knows how to stop me and that's kind of a direct point."
Chapman did reveal that for a moment on The Dr. Oz Show, he was scared that Angell would say "yes" to his proposal. "When I said it, I think I was about ready to cry, but I knew that she would say no, and once she said no, that did it," he explains. "And 98 percent of the rumors went away, the lies went away."
While there is no special lady in Chapman's life right now, he says that "it's almost time" to start looking for a partner, but he's not quite there. "I can maybe go out with a girl and eat and date a little, if that's a date? Where, how, do you date today? I've forgotten!"
For more on Chapman, watch below.
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