Ryan O’Neal and actress Farrah Fawcett on March 9, 1985 in Beverly Hills, California. . Photo:
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty

Before his death, Ryan O’Neal called Farrah Fawcett his “forever Valentine.”

O’Neal died on Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal announced in an Instagram tribute. He was 82.

Fawcett and O’Neal began dating in 1979, and were involved in an on-again, off-again relationship. Their son, Redmond O’Neal, was born in 1985.

Before his death, Ryan O’Neal called Farrah Fawcett his “forever Valentine.”

O’Neal died on Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal announced in an Instagram tribute. He was 82.

Fawcett and O’Neal began dating in 1979, and were involved in an on-again, off-again relationship. Their son, Redmond O’Neal, was born in 1985.

The couple never married, but their passionate love affair kept them together for 17 years until a breakup in 1997. At the time of their separation, the two lived in separate homes, but not separate lives. Following their separation, the two co-parented their son together.

They reconnected after the Love Story star was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001. O’Neal remained by Fawcett’s side after she was diagnosed with anal cancer and until her death at 62 in 2009.

“I loved her with all my heart,” O’Neal told PEOPLE after her death. “I will miss her so very, very much.”

O’Neal exclusively told PEOPLE 10 years after her death, that “there was never a day” he “didn’t love her.”

Fawcett and O’Neal fell in love when she was still married to The Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors. The actor asked O’Neal to check in on his wife while he was away filming; O’Neal and Fawcett went on a date, which he described to the Los Angeles Times: “We sat and kissed and kissed until our lips were bloody.”

“I was so overwhelmed by this mental and physical attraction for him that I didn’t think about anything except what was happening right there,” Fawcett later told LIFE Magazine.

O’Neal shared with the New York Daily News, “I lost interest in nearly everything but this woman. For the first time in my life, something took precedence over myself.”

Fawcett then embarked on a “spontaneous” and “volatile” romance with the “love of her life.” The former couple would go on to have blowout fights that O’Neal detailed in his 2012 memoir Both of Us: My Life With Farrah. He shared that in the middle of one violent episode, their son, then six, allegedly threatened to hurt himself with a butcher knife unless they stopped fighting.

“Ryan is the most honest person I know,” Fawcett told PEOPLE in 1981. “He’s helped me be more independent by being the greatest ego booster I’ve ever had. I think our personalities are well suited.”

Fawcett’s close friends and costars noted how special the couple’s love affair was.

“Ryan was the love of her life. I don’t think she was happy without him. They fought and loved with passion. It was never boring. They were electric together,” Fawcett’s close friend Sylvia Dorsey said.

“You saw them together, they looked hot as a fritter,” Nancy Collins shared in the This is Farrah Fawcett special. “You could feel the steam coming off of them.”

Fawcett’s friend Mela Murphy recalled that O’Neal slept in a cot by her side at St. John’s Medical Center in Los Angeles during her final days.

In the days before her death, O’Neal proposed marriage, Fawcett’s close friend Alana Stewart told PEOPLE in 2019.

“I think they would’ve married if she had made it because he asked her to marry him in the hospital and she said yes. But she took a turn for the worse,” Stewart said at the time. “This was just a few weeks before the end, so perhaps it wasn’t realistic. The two of them had a deep bond and deep love. No matter what they went through, the ups and downs, he was the one she wanted by her side.”

More recently, O’Neal shared a photo of Fawcett’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star on Valentine’s Day. He wrote in the Instagram post, “My forever Valentine… .”

O’Neal is survived by Redmond; his two children with Joanna More, Tatum and Griffin; and his son Patrick, whom he shared with Leigh Taylor-Young.

The couple never married, but their passionate love affair kept them together for 17 years until a breakup in 1997. At the time of their separation, the two lived in separate homes, but not separate lives. Following their separation, the two co-parented their son together.

They reconnected after the Love Story star was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001. O’Neal remained by Fawcett’s side after she was diagnosed with anal cancer and until her death at 62 in 2009.