‘Dirty Dancing’ star Kelly Bishop details affair with married man before finding her true love

Kelly Bishop knew when it was time to walk away from a romance doomed from the start.

The actress, who made her mark in “Dirty Dancing” and “Gilmore Girls,” has written a memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl.” In it, she details her decades-long career in showbiz and the pitfalls that came with it.

For her book, the 80-year-old deeply reflected on private memories that shaped her life, ones she’s never shared until now. One of them was about having an affair with a married man after getting her first Broadway show, “Golden Rainbow,” in the summer of 1967.

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In the book, she described her former flame, who remained unnamed, as “a highly successful publicity agent.”

“I knew that it was wrong,” Bishop told Fox News Digital on eventually ending the relationship.

Kelly Bishop is seen here with co-star Jerry Orbach in “Dirty Dancing” circa 1987. ((c) Artisan Entertainment/ Courtesy: Everett Collection)

“You’re not supposed to be doing that,” she admitted. “He wasn’t either… I started thinking about his wife, who may or may not have known about us, who may have experienced other affairs he had. I don’t know. But I knew this wasn’t fair to her.”

Kelly Bishop’s memoir, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” is available now. (Gallery Books)

In the book, Bishop described the union as “exquisite” and “romantic.” Only two people knew about it, including a “discreet” close friend and her mother.

At first, it seemed easy. In the book, Bishop wrote she never met or even saw his wife, which “made it easy to ignore her existence.”

But Bishop said she loved him “so deeply” that it “ended our affair.”

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As a young actress trying to find her way, Kelly Bishop fell head over heels for a married man. She ultimately walked away. (Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images)

“Right around the time I left ‘Golden Rainbow,’ the reality finally sank in that if this man’s wife loved him nearly as much as I did, I was doing her a huge, incredibly unkind disservice,” Bishop wrote. 

“I had to say goodbye to him, and I did. It was painful for both of us – I think he was genuinely in love with me too, and it broke my heart to hurt him. But I guess no one ever said that doing the right thing would always feel good.”

Bishop told Fox News Digital that as much as she loved him, she had no regrets calling it quits for good, even if it meant walking away with a broken heart.

Kelly Bishop is best known for playing Emily Gilmore in the show “Gilmore Girls,” which ran from 2000-2007. (ALAMY)

“If [his wife] cares about him as much as I do, he belongs to her,” said Bishop. “This is not for me to do. And it was breaking my heart anyway.”

“I was lonely,” she said. “And that’s an unfortunate setup. You’re not going to see the person as often as you want to. You don’t have the freedom to call them and all those other things. I just thought, ‘This is absolutely going to go nowhere except lead to more lonely nights and broken hearts.’”

“I just needed to get out of this,” she reflected. “I couldn’t do this anymore. So, I got out.”

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Kelly Bishop also appeared in 2016’s “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” (Netflix/Kobal/Shutterstock/ALAMY)

After the relationship ended, Bishop rebounded with Peter Miller, a Broadway stagehand and electrician a couple of years younger than her. She described him as “cute, sexy, charming, employed and single.” She was 26 and at risk of being faced with “the curse of spinsterhood” put on by society.

The couple tied the knot in 1970. However, it was far from a happily ever after.

“I think I knew very quickly that he had a gambling problem,” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “[But] I did not understand that as an addiction… I had made all sorts of deals with him. ‘If you do this, we’ll do that.’ I even made him go to a therapist for a while. I later learned through my own psychotherapy that you can’t cure an addiction through therapy.”

From left: Edward Herrmann, Kelly Bishop, Shirley Knight and Sammy Williams attend a Tony Awards party at Sardi’s in New York City on April 18, 1976. Bishop was part of the original Broadway cast of “A Chorus Line” before finding fame in Hollywood. (Lynn Karlin/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images)

“If you’re an alcoholic, you go to AA,” Bishop explained. “Unfortunately, at that time, there were no Gamblers Anonymous. I certainly was not aware of one at all. I remember thinking, ‘I wish there was one.’

“I’m sure there are a lot of meetings these days, especially with all the online gambling that you see on TV. But I guess I was very young and naïve. I thought if I could just give him the confidence to know how much he’s loved, he would be able to get over this.”

“The only thing that happened was I was dead broke when I left that marriage,” said Bishop. “That’s what happened. It was difficult. It just didn’t work.”

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Kelly Bishop also starred in the series “Bunheads” opposite Sutton Foster. The show aired from 2012 to 2013. (Adam Taylor/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images Family via Getty Images)

Bishop wrote that it “took two years, including a trip to the Dominican Republic, to end a five-year marriage.”

“By then, it was honestly not that difficult [to leave],” Bishop explained to Fox News Digital. “I was in such debt… Maybe ‘betrayed’ is too harsh a word, but [I was] sort of hopeless about the whole thing… I wasn’t crazy about that person anymore.

“This is not the person you want to be with because he’s not trying to get help. He’s not trying to help himself. He’s just looking for the next place where he can get some money. And of course, along with that kind of addiction, and I’m sure with possibly every other kind of addiction, comes a lot of lying. And I don’t like being lied to.”

From left: Kelly Bishop, Alexis Bledel and Lauren Graham attend the premiere of Netflix’s “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life” at the Regency Bruin Theatre on Nov. 18, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

“I don’t lie myself,” she shared. “That can turn a person off. It certainly turned me off. So it was simply a sense of relief when I finally called it quits… I knew I had to pull myself right back out of the gutter where I was to continue my life and make a living.”

Bishop would go on to find lasting love. In 1981, she married TV host Lee Leonard. The union lasted until he died in 2018 at age 89.

“The secret was honesty and love, along with support – tremendous support on both sides,” she said. “We were each other’s fans. We had a great time. We just loved each other so much, and we respected each other’s work. We both knew how much we had so much passion for our own work.”

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“It was having a person who respected me, supported me, who was there and was really honest,” she continued. “We talked all the time, and we talked very openly. We didn’t keep secrets from one another. And I think it’s really that love, respect and communication – that’s the secret.”

Today, Bishop hopes her memoir will encourage readers, especially women, to be “their authentic selves.”

“It’s important to be your own best friend with all the trials and tribulations we go through,” she said. “It will not only keep you content in your life, but it will also give you a good sense of… your worth. Hold on to that. Don’t let anyone shake that.”