Dinah Shore and Burt Reynolds, the Romance Everyone Remembers Wrong

TLDR: Dinah Shore and Burt Reynolds fell into one of the most talked about romances of the 1970s, a twenty year age gap that scandalized the tabloids of the era. The popular story says Shore nobly stepped aside so Reynolds could have children, but his own memoir tells a messier, more honest version, and the decades of friendship that followed the breakup are the part most people forget.

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It started with Burt Reynolds popping out of a closet.

Around 1971, Burt Reynolds appeared as a guest on Dinah Shore’s daytime show, Dinah’s Place, and the surprise entrance was enough to catch her attention immediately.

Shore, twice divorced and famously protective of her image, turned down his invitation to spend the weekend at his place in Palm Springs.

Reynolds didn’t take the hint. A follow up meeting in Chicago not long after turned into a real courtship, and within months the two were living together.

The Twenty Year Gap That Made Headlines

Shore was born in 1916, Reynolds in 1936, putting a full twenty years between them. In 1974, People magazine bluntly described Shore as Reynolds’ “new old lady, 19 years older,” a line that captures exactly how the press talked about it at the time.

The double standard was obvious even then. Older men dating much younger women barely raised an eyebrow in Hollywood, but an older woman with a rising sex symbol was treated as a genuine novelty story.

The relationship happened to land at the peak of Reynolds’ career, right as Deliverance and his famous nude Cosmopolitan centerfold turned him into the biggest box office draw in the world. Dating Shore, elegant and widely respected, gave his hard partying reputation a softer edge at exactly the moment he needed it.

The Breakup Story You’ve Heard Isn’t the Whole Truth

Ask most fan magazines from the era why they split, and you’ll get a tidy, almost noble explanation. Reynolds wanted children, Shore had already raised her own and didn’t want to deny him that future, so she stepped back out of love.

Reynolds himself told a different story once he was ready to be honest about it. In his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me, he admitted his career was on fire and his ego had gotten completely out of control during those years.

He confessed he behaved badly, wrongly convinced the relationship couldn’t survive their age difference anyway, and wanted the freedom to date other women at the height of his fame.

A biography of country singer Tammy Wynette later revealed she was secretly seeing Reynolds while he was still living with Shore, which lines up far better with his own admission than the sanitized version does.

The biological explanation protected both of their images at the time. It spared Shore the humiliation of being left for someone else, and it spared Reynolds from looking like he’d abandoned the woman who’d helped elevate his standing in Hollywood.

What Shore Meant to Him, in His Own Words

Whatever drove the breakup, Reynolds never downplayed what the relationship meant to him. He called walking away from Shore his biggest regret, writing that they were soulmates and that he never found anyone like her again.

He credited her with civilizing him. She taught him about music, art, wine, which fork to use at dinner, and how to carry himself, turning a former college football player into someone who could hold his own in a room full of Hollywood sophistication.

Shore also showed up for him at his lowest professional moment. During the brutal reviews of his 1975 musical At Long Last Love, a role that forced him to sing and dance on camera, she stayed by his side reassuring him through the fallout.

The Friendship That Outlasted the Romance

Shore and Reynolds never turned cold toward each other after splitting, which was rare enough on its own in Hollywood. The clearest proof came on December 13, 1981, during the CBS special All-Star Party for Burt Reynolds, a tribute marking his 25 years in the business.

Near the end of the night, Reynolds spotted Shore in the audience and called her up to the stage. With Jack Lemmon at the piano, she sang “The Glory of Love” in a moment so raw and emotional it became one of the most talked about scenes in network variety special history.

A decade later, the two sat down together again, this time with Shore interviewing Reynolds for her cable show A Conversation with Dinah. Whatever tension might have lingered between former partners simply wasn’t there.

Her Life Before Reynolds, and After

Shore had already been married twice by the time she met Reynolds. Her marriage to actor George Montgomery lasted nearly twenty years and produced a daughter, Melissa, plus an adopted son, John David, before ending around 1962.

A brief second marriage to contractor Maurice F. Smith lasted only fifteen months. After that divorce, Shore decided she was done with marriage entirely, a decision she held onto even through Reynolds’ proposals.

Shore was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1993 and died the following February at her Beverly Hills home, just days before what would have been her 78th birthday. Montgomery, her first husband, was at her bedside alongside her two children when she passed.

Reynolds’ statement after her death said everything about how he still felt decades later. He said Hollywood had lost its greatest and only real angel, and that Dinah was what God meant when he strived to make perfection.

She’s one of several major names from that era worth a second look, and this roundup of classic American talk show hosts covers a few more of them.

Dinah Shore and Burt Reynolds, Frequently Asked Questions