Cecily Chapman, the daughter of the late Dog the Bounty Hunter star Beth Chapman, has canceled her wedding to fiance Matty Smith but insisted their relationship is not over. Although she did not reveal the reason for the breakup to respect Smith’s privacy, it does come amid a disagreement with her adoptive father, Duane “Dog” Chapman. She has not been invited to Duane’s wedding to Francie Frane, scheduled for Sept. 2.
“I am not getting married,” Chapman, 28, told The Sun in an interview published Wednesday. While she prepares to move from Hawaii to the East Coast, she and Smith are “really spending time apart for a little bit.” She said they might be apart for as much as long as two years. “I’m definitely not in a rush to get married,” she said. Chapman declined to go into the specific reasons for canceling the wedding, adding that she wants to protect Smith’s privacy since he is not a public figure.
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Smith and Chapman got engaged during the 2018 holiday season, just months before Beth died in June 2019. In February, Chapman announced they were getting married on Dec. 1, 2021. She dreamed to wear her mother’s wedding dress but ultimately picked out a new one. In a February interview with The Sun, Chapman said Beth’s dress was “super beautiful” for her mother and “custom-made to fit her body.” She did not want to alter the dress so much that her younger sister Bonnie Chapman couldn’t wear it at all. “It might be best just to keep it for a keepsake to remember her by, like a piece of memorabilia,” Chapman suggested.
Meanwhile, Duane is set to walk down the aisle with Frane, who will be his sixth wife. The two have been engaged since May 2020. Earlier this month, he announced that the two will marry on Sept. 2. However, Chapman still has not received an invitation yet, she told The Sun this week. “I’m assuming that he thinks I wouldn’t want to be there. I didn’t even know there was a date until The Sun did a story about it,” Chapman said. If Duane asked her to go, Chapman said she would attend, adding that he is “Still my dad.”
Chapman also claimed she never met Frane and has rarely seen Duane in person since the funeral. “I’ve never met Francie in my life,” she said. “I haven’t even been to the Castle Rock house since the funeral,” she added, of her mother Beth Chapman’s funeral in Colorado in 2019. I’ve seen my dad twice since the funeral.”
“He’s got to find his own happiness and I’m happy for him. He’s got to do what he’s got to do,” Chapman said of Duane. The Dog’s Most Wanted star’s family sent a statement to The Sun in response to Chapman’s comments, reading, “Family has always been, and will continue to be, important to Dog and Francie and for anyone to suggest otherwise is untrue.”
Duane’s daughter Lyssa Chapman defended her father’s decision to get married two years after Beth’s death. When one person on Twitter suggested they could never get married so soon after their husband’s death, Lyssa quickly responded. “God [forbid] something happen to your husband, I have no doubt your miserable a— WILL be alone FOREVER,” Lyssa wrote. “Although I doubt it will be by choice. AMEN.”
