Dan Gilroy and Shelley Duvall’s relationship, explained

While we all loved Shelley Duvall as her iconic The Shining character, Wendy Torrance, I first remember seeing the sweet and wonderful actress in the charming ’90s TV movie Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme which left a big impression on me. She played Little Bo Peep and, as it turns out, her real-life boyfriend Dan Gilroy played Mother Goose’s child Gordon. But while we’re familiar with her many projects, we might not know much about her relationship.

The awful news of Shelley Duvall’s death included comments from her partner Dan Gilroy, who is a member of the band Breakfast Club. As we think about the actor’s career and feel upset once again about the unfortunate and unfair way she was portrayed and treated by the media, let’s learn more about this relationship.

What do we know about Dan Gilroy and Shelley Duvall’s relationship?

While we know death is an inevitable part of life, none of us want to imagine losing our long-time partner. We feel terrible for the pain Dan Gilroy must be feeling considering how many decades he and Shelley Duvall were together. According to The Sun, Dan Gilroy and Shelley Duvall’s relationship can be traced back to 1989. Duvall was in two serious relationships before that. After her 1974 divorce from Bernard Sampson, she had a romance with Paul Simon from 1976 to 1978.

While Gilroy and Duvall rarely talked about their time as a couple, we’ve picked up a few details from interviews. We don’t know as much about Gilroy as we do Duvall, but the most publicized fact about him is that he and Madonna were a couple for an 18-month period in the late ’70s and early ’80s, according to Page Six. Madonna was also in Breakfast Club (the band, not the movie).

From what we’ve gathered about their relationship, Dan Gilroy was caring and thoughtful when talking about his partner, no doubt also because of the horrible way she was treated on The Shining set and in the more recent past. When we hear about the best love stories, whether in a book, a movie, or through the celebrity grapevine, we know it’s a good sign when both people feel it’s just “right” from the very beginning. That seems to be what happened here; the pair met in 1989 and remained together for over three decades.

In 2024, Shelley Duvall was interviewed by The New York Times and Gilroy spoke to the reporter. He shared some things about their life together, including that they began living in Texas because her brothers became sick. Prior to that, they were in Los Angeles, but Duvall’s house was ruined by an earthquake in 1994. Gilroy said “It was great, all those years in L.A., really terrific. And when we moved, after the earthquake, it was terrific in Texas.”

We don’t want to speculate about what Duvall went through and we want to be respectful, but Gilroy did speak a little bit about that period of her life. He said, “Things went downhill when she started becoming afraid of things, maybe didn’t want to work. It’s really hard to pin it on any one thing.”

Although Gilroy didn’t choose to be part of Duvall’s 2021 The Hollywood Reporter interview, which became a famous story since everyone was wondering about her and hoping she was okay, the article did say that they lived together in Texas Hill Country.

What was Dan Gilroy’s statement about Shelley Duvall’s death?

It’s impossible not to well up reading Dan Gilory’s statement about Shelley Duvall’s passing, and we can feel the love through his words. While we’re grieving, we know he is feeling this loss even more.

According to NPR, Dan said, “My dear, sweet, wonderful life, partner, and friend left us last night. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley.”