‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’ Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman Engaged to Francie Frane 10 Months After Beth Chapman’s Death

Duane “Dog” Chapman is engaged to girlfriend Francie Frane after the couple began dating earlier this year. The Dog the Bounty Hunter star, who lost wife Beth Chapman to cancer in June 2019, announced his plans to marry Frane in a new interview with The Sun, saying he wants the celebration to be the “biggest wedding there’s ever been” and “one hell of a party.”

Frane said of the proposal, which came just over a month after the pair went public with their relationship, “I wasn’t expecting it at all. I think I had gone to pick up some food and then when I came back he had all the lights turned down with just a few lights on and a bunch of candles lit. So when I came in I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome’. Then he said, ‘Come in, sit down because I need to talk to you.’”

“So I put all the food in the kitchen and I came in and he said, ‘I know that God brought you into my life and I don’t want to spend one moment of it without you,’” she continued, tearing up. “And he got down on one knee and he opened the ring box and he said, ‘Will you marry me and spend the rest of our lives together?’ Who can say no to that? It was wonderful.”

The couple now has plans to marry after coronavirus social distancing guidelines ease, with plans to invite Chapman’s 12 children, Frane’s two sons with her late husband, and their grandchildren to all share in their day. The reality personality even wants to include his fans in the celebration, telling The Sun, “I’ve had so many fans ask ‘When you marry Francie, are you going to let your fans come? So we’re word negotiating right now because I want to open it up.”

“I would love to have the biggest wedding there’s ever been. I’m sorry but that’s just me. I hope I can talk Francie into it and open it to my fans, the ‘Dog Pound,’ to everybody,” he continued. “It would be one hell of a party and it’s just what people need right now. I told Francie, people they need a little love after being locked down. I love the idea of that.”

Chapman and Frane first met while bonding over their recent losses of their respective spouses, both of whom were battling cancer before their death. The bounty hunter said of people who have criticized them for moving on too quickly, “You know there’s always going to be haters, and I probably arrested half of them.”

Frane added, “I think too that there’s always going to be people who say we did this wrong or we did that wrong or we’ve moved on too quickly or too fast. But the truth is that both of us have spent three years walking alongside our spouses sick and we know that God brought us together and that’s why we don’t believe that it’s too soon, and because we both have done our share of screaming and crying and asking why. Then for us to come together the way that we did and build this friendship because of what we’ve been through, that turned into a love story. We don’t believe that it’s too soon.”