Alan Hamel opened up about the final moments he spent with Suzanne Somers just before her death, and he revealed the promise that he made to her. The beloved actress and entrepreneur died on Oct. 15, 2023, after a decades-long battle with cancer. Just before her death, Somers told her husband of 46 years that she wanted him to live a happy life without her.
“The last two nights I was with her, she was non-responsive,” Hamel, 89, told Woman’s World in an October 2025 interview. “I was talking to her non-stop from 8 p.m. one evening to 5 a.m. the next morning, hoping she could hear me.”
“Then I decided to kiss her, and she kissed me back,” he revealed. “At that moment, I knew she could hear everything I said. Then she woke up long enough to say a couple of things to me, and one was, ‘I don’t want you to mope around. I want you to live your life because you have a great life ahead of you, and I don’t want you to walk around all depressed.’”
“I moped around for a year and a half after she passed,” Hamel admitted.
Hamel and Somers were inseparable and often talked about their “date nights.” Eighteen months after Somers’ death, Hamel realized he missed dating.
“Suzanne and I went on dates a lot, at least once a week, sometimes twice a week,” he told People magazine in an interview. He added that when he decided to jump back into dating, he didn’t want to be seen out in public with just one woman, as he felt it wouldn’t be a good look so soon after Somers’ death.
“So I started dating two women at the same time,” he said. “It was like a year-and-a-half after Suzanne passed, and so that if you saw the three of us sitting in a restaurant having dinner, you’d probably think it was a business meeting. I was fine with that.”
The “double” dates didn’t last long. Two years after Somers’ death, Hamel is dating actress Joanna Cassidy. He told Woman’s World he believes his late wife would be “really happy” about his new relationship.
“Suzanne always liked her,” Hamel said of Cassidy. “She also respected her, and I think she would compliment her for being a great actress.”
