LOS ANGELES — For five decades, he carried the image of the man who could not be broken—a bionic hero rebuilt with steel and circuitry, a stuntman who walked away from explosions without a scratch. But at 87 years old, Lee Majors has finally admitted that the one wound that never healed was not on screen. It was in his heart, left by the woman he married, lost, and has now publicly named as the defining love of his life: Farrah Fawcett.
In a raw and wide-ranging reflection that has surfaced this week, Majors, the actor known for three iconic television series across three decades, pulled back the curtain on a private grief he has carefully controlled for most of his adult life. He has spoken about the phone call that undid his marriage, the single request that changed everything, and the haunting evidence left in Farrah’s final will—a detail that has always hinted at a deeper story than the divorce papers could ever tell.
Majors has never been a man of dramatic confessions. The Kentucky-born performer, who was orphaned before he was two, built a career on a specific kind of restrained masculinity. But when he talks about Farrah, the emotional seam shows.
“For fifty years I kept that story to myself,” he confessed in the detailed account. “Now, I want people to understand how much she meant to me.” Those who have followed his career know that the marriage to Farrah was the defining relationship of his life.
What has remained opaque until now is the full, untold context of how it all collapsed.
The story Majors is now siting is a gut-wrenching story of trust, timing, and a professional kindness that had unforgettable personal consequences. The couple met in 1968, at the absolute apex of his rise to fame as Heath Barkley on “The Big Valley,” an era long before Farrah was a global icon. He was already a star; she was a 21-year-old unknown from Corpus Christi, Texas.
And the courtship was gentle and almost charmingly clumsy, he set his sights on her after seeing her photographs in the office of his agent, and he requested to meet the woman who was thee “the best-looking girl.”
Their first date was a disaster. It nearly doomed everything. She was nervous, ordered a Scotch and Coke, and got violently ill, thinking she had wrecked her chances,” his note reveals.
But the following morning, Farrah woke to a delivery of 13 yellow roses, which sent her spirits soaring. He wanted to see her again. They moved quickly, and in 1973—the same year Majors became a superstar as Colonel Steve Austin in “The Six Million Dollar Man”—the couple married.
It seemed blessed. But within a decade, it would be shattered.
At the height of his fame, Majors was a global phenomenon. The image of him running in slow motion was manufactured across the world, and it was universally recognized in over 70 countries. But her own star was rising in parallel.
With Majors’ enthusiastic support, Farrah was cast in “Charlie’s Angels,” and the collective culture went haywire. She became the face of an era, her red swimsuit poster—which Majors actually chose—sold 12 million copies.
The physical absence turned emotional cold. “There has been a painful year or so when I think I saw her two weeks in one year,” he has recalled. “That is not a marriage.
That is two people sharing a mailing address.” He pushed her to be more than a pin-up, encouraging her to leave for films. They didn’t work.
The tension got unbearable, but they remained committed to eventually lost the relationship.
But it was in 1979, on a butt in Toronto while filming “The Last Chase,” that the event that drives his behavior occurred. He was standing with an old rival and a friend from the 1960s, actor Ryan O’Neal. Their friendship from the Big Valley/bachelor days had been a good one.
They renewed their bond as drinking buddies. As he prepared to fly back to Los Angeles, Majors made a decision he has had to live with ever since. A decision of unimaginable consequence.
“She’s all alone up there,” he gave O’Neal. “Why don’t you take her to dinner one night?” Majors asked.
O’Neal, the account says, hesitated. He knew he had feelings for Farrah that he shouldn’t act on. He waited a week, but then a concert came up that Farrah loved, and he used it as a cue to reach out.
His hesitation gave way to momentum, and the “dinner” that was meant to be a common gesture transformed into a full-blown 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 of the electricity that brought down a household.
Lee found out from friends. When he pushed the issue, and Majors called asking Ryan to stop, O’Neal’s answer has become the curator of his life’s tragedy: “I can’t. I really love her.”
The divorce was acres in February 1982. There was no war, with no memoir, no public demonization. Lee Majors went directly to work on the next phase of his career, “The Fall Guy” which their kind of that metastasized in popularity in the 1980s.
But a deep cut remained. The deeper wound came later, in a silent final scene that Majors says he confided at 87 because he does not want to take a secret to his own bed. In 1982 Farrah saw she was left behind to those in Toronto.
He remembers the moment precisely. In his private thought, “When People ran a piece on the whole 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 in 1980, I said one thing I still think about,” he says. “The bottom line is I’m lonely and miserable without her.”
That statement came out of him even when the paper was printed. He knew the foundation was gone.
The world moved on. Farrah had a long, public relationship with Ryan O’Neal, raising their son Redmond together. Majors went on to marry three times more, having three children and finding a reconciliatory 20 year plus marriage with Faith Cross.
Yet, when the cameras stop, Majors admits she was always a haunting echo. He remembers the good moments, the way she would be compliant and want to cook his meals, be dependent in the earliest years. He also remembers the balance of how he opened the career doors that eventually led her to want her independence.
“There are times when I think that perhaps I created a monster,” he has mused. “But then, deep down, I know that’s just not true.” She was a talent.
He knew that the fame did not create the worth, but it took her away.
And then came the final clash in truth from June of 2009. Farrah was dying of cancer at age 62. Lee picked up the phone.
He called her on her birthday. Their 40-minute conversation was, he still says, a moment of grace. They talked about her life, about the disease, about everything the years had coughed up.
He didn’t cut it short. The next day, he was told she passed away. She died the following day.
He issued a short statement, distilling the eulogy to a single elegant line, calling her “an angel on Earth.”
But the final act of that story is what has always haunted the corners of the public’s eye—the nearly uncanny detail in the singer’s will. When the papers were legally available, Farrah Fawcett left $100,000 of her estate to Lee Majors. She was also a hefty legacy—and she meted nothing to Ryan O’Neal, the man who had been at her side for their final three decades.
It was a fact rarely spoken about out loud, since none of the parties involved would touch it, but it’s a fact that has been noted in numerous rooms. That her last document acknowledge the first husband while excluding the final partner.
New interviews, Lee Majors is finally ready to speak, a journalist asked what farrah’s last little kindness meant.
“It told me that she knew,” he says. “That regardless of what happened, of what she was, we were in a separate world. She didn’t forget me.
And I never forgot her.” The thought is both freeing and ensures he’s finally, honestly, spoken the truth.
At 87, his health has faded slightly after a heart procedure in 2003, but those who looked closely saw the watered eyes. He remains a husband, a father, and a gentleman of old guard. In the last time that we know of, he’s not interested in playing the villain.
He’s not looking to rewrite history. He wasn’t angry about losing the woman, the one he called “Farrah Fawcett-Majors,” the same woman we claim to have created, broke his heart. What he has:
He gives lessons for those who have good things about it. Don’t give away what you value… The choices we make and the words we use to invite other people are real.
A simple request—an open line to an old friend—can unwind into a story of a love lost and never regained.
Majors have lived quietly in Houston, Texas, with Faith. They host over sports and studio appearances, occasionally speaking about six million-dollar man. But that part of his life was closed.
On the broken bionic hero, the parts that were left.
Ultimately, this is the thread—the proof that some love is non-erased, that with time, the most hardened—and most Demi-god-like—can finally see the woman he’s always made. “Now I’m saying that.” “I loved her.
He was lost. He did not.”
This disclosure hits the silence in a remarkable Hollywood that usually prefers its stories skewed with a punch. This version ends not with a punchline, but with a quiet, whispered confession at his 87th year, a woman’s name on an old man’s lips. Kind words from a lifetime.
The story speaks to the monumental truth that some bore, like a scar is not a one-to-one mathematical goodbye. No matter how reclusive Lee Majors went, she has remained in the story of his life. The six million dollar man was broken in the process.
As the day goes on, he’s at home. On watching the dusty tonic, he pauses. And he may just see Farrah’s face.
