It’s been nearly a decade and a half since Patrick Swayze died, and the actor’s widow has found a new love with second husband Albert DePrisco. But Lisa Niemi Swayze says her first husband is always with her in spirit.
“His voice is in my head,” she said as she appeared on “Today” on Friday to raise awareness for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. “He comments on what I’m doing. When I need a bolstering up or something’s going on, I can ask him in my head, and I hear exactly what he’s saying, which is generally, ‘Come on, girl, get real.’”
Swayze died in 2009 after a 22-month battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, but that wasn’t the end to his and Niemi Swayze’s love story, the 66-year-old said.
“Just because somebody’s gone doesn’t end your relationship with them,” she explained. “We spent 34 years together, and that’s always going to be a part of my life and who I am.”
Niemi Swayze married DePrisco, a jeweler, in 2014, but told “Today” co-host Hoda Kotb on Friday that the relationship “doesn’t conflict with the love that I still have for Patrick.”
“Just because somebody’s gone doesn’t mean you fall out of love, and my wise friend says that’s because love comes from the same well,” she explained. “I thought that was a really wonderful thing to say.”
Niemi Swayze also told Kotb that she still catches her late husband’s work on TV. “I always have my favorite parts,” she said. “I always cry at the same three places in ‘Ghost.’ I love him falling out of the airplane in ‘Point Break’, going ‘Adios, amigo,’ because that’s him.”
“He was a hero, and I tell you what, the man could do anything. He was so talented — jumping out of planes, riding horses, piloting an aircraft. He was just so talented.”