Duane “Dog” Chapman is honoring his late wife Beth Chapman‘s memory. The reality television personality posted a throwback family photo on his Instagram Story Wednesday ahead of the upcoming holiday season.
The photo showed Dog the Bounty Hunter and Beth posing with their children when they were younger. The photo had no caption, but it comes as the reality star prepares to spend Christmas without his wife for the first time.
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Take a look at the photo, posted by InTouch, here.
Beth passed away on June 26 at the age of 51 after a long battle with throat and lung cancer. She was first diagnosed in September 2017 and declared cancer-free after undergoing surgery and chemotherapy. After a medical emergency in November 2018 to remove a blockage in her throat, she learned her cancer had returned.
The couple starred on Dog’s Most Wanted earlier this year, which chronicled as they went after the most sought-after fugitives in the U.S. The WGN America series also featured the last months of Beth’s life, as well as the aftermath of her death.
“Never did I think it would be this bad,” he told the outlet in August. “When she was with me, I would say, ‘Get in there right now cause someday maybe she won’t be here.’”
“I would pick her Kleenexes up off the floor and say, ‘someday these Kleenexes won’t be here.’ Now when I go in there and they’re not there I’m like ‘I told myself, so it’s OK. I told myself so.’ So I kind of prepared myself whether she prepared it or not to, you know, see what it could’ve been like.”
Dog’s Most Wanted turned out to be huge hit for the network. The series was named the No. 1 show on WGN America. Should it be renewed for Season 2, it would mark the first time Dog is on television without his wife.
“It’s a lot different. When she was there – always trying to be the nurse, or [say] ‘Don’t do that’ – now she’s not. I can already tell, walking down the street, going places,” Duane said. “It’s a different world,” he told PEOPLE in October.
“When your spouse dies, as a man, I mean as me, so generally probably everybody, you’re released from that obligation of being married,” Dog added. “So your mind and you go crazy. And then after a while, you realize that never will no one ever love me as much as she did. And I will probably never love anyone else as much as I loved her.”
