'Dirty Dancing' star Kelly Bishop details her romance with a married man before finding true love

Kelly Bishop knew when it was time to walk away from a romance doomed from the start.

The actress, who made her mark on “Dirty Dancing” and “Gilmore Girls,” has written an autobiography, “The Third Gilmore Girl,” detailing her decades-long career in show business and the obstacles that came with it.

For her book, the 80-year-old actress reflected deeply on private memories that marked her life and that she had never shared until now. One of them was about her affair with a married man after landing her first Broadway show, “Golden Rainbow,” in the summer of 1967.

In the book, she describes her former love, whose name remains anonymous, as “a highly successful advertising agent.”

“I knew it was wrong,” Bishop told Fox News Digital about ultimately ending the relationship.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” she admitted. “He didn’t either… I started thinking about his wife, that she may or may not have known about us, that he may have had other affairs. I don’t know. But I knew this wasn’t fair to her.”

In the book, Bishop described the union as “exquisite” and “romantic.” Only two people knew about it, including a “discreet” close friend and her mother.

At first, it seemed easy. In the book, Bishop wrote that he never met or saw his wife, which “made it easy to ignore her existence.”

But Bishop said she loved him “so deeply” that she “ended our relationship.”

“When I left 'Golden Rainbow,' I finally realized that if this man's wife loved him nearly as much as I did, I was doing her a huge, incredibly cruel disservice,” Bishop wrote.

“I had to say goodbye to him and I did. It was painful for both of us. I think he was really in love with me too and it broke my heart to hurt him. But I guess no one said that doing the right thing would always be a good experience.”

Bishop told Fox News Digital that as much as she loved him, she didn't regret leaving the relationship for good, even if it meant walking away heartbroken.

“If (his wife) cares about him as much as I do, he belongs to her,” Bishop said. “It’s not my place to do this. And anyway, it was breaking my heart.”

“I was lonely,” she said. “And that’s an unfortunate situation. You’re not going to see the person as often as you’d like. You don’t have the freedom to call them and all that other stuff. I just thought, ‘This isn’t going to lead anywhere except more lonely nights and broken hearts.’”

“I needed to get out of this,” he reflected. “I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left.”

After the relationship ended, Bishop reconnected with Peter Miller, a Broadway electrician and stagehand a couple of years her junior. She described him as “cute, sexy, charming, employed and single.” She was 26 and at risk of facing “the curse of singleness” imposed by society.

The couple married in 1970, although it was not a happily ever after ending.

“I think I knew very quickly that he had a gambling problem,” Bishop told Fox News Digital. “But I didn’t understand it as an addiction… I had made all kinds of deals with him. ‘If you do this, we’ll do that.’ I even had him go to a therapist for a while. I later learned through my own psychotherapy that you can’t cure an addiction through therapy.”

“If you’re an alcoholic, you go to AA,” Bishop explained. “Unfortunately, at that time, there was no Gamblers Anonymous. I certainly didn’t know about one. I remember thinking, ‘I wish there was one.’”

“I’m sure there are a lot of hangouts these days, especially with all the online gaming on TV. But I guess I was very young and naive. I thought if I could just give him the confidence to know how much I loved him, I could get through this.”

“The only thing that happened was that I ran out of money when I left that marriage,” Bishop said. “That’s what happened. It was hard. It just didn’t work out.”

The bishop wrote that “it took two years, including a trip to the Dominican Republic, to end a five-year marriage.”

“At that point, honestly, it wasn’t that hard (to leave him),” Bishop explained to Fox News Digital. “I was so in debt… Maybe ‘betrayed’ is too harsh a word, but (I was) kind of hopeless about the whole thing… I wasn’t crazy about that person anymore.

“This is not the person you want to be around because he’s not trying to get help. He’s not trying to help himself. He’s just looking for the next place he can get some money. And of course, along with that kind of addiction, and I’m sure with possibly any other kind of addiction, comes a lot of lying. And I don’t like being lied to.”

“I don’t lie to myself,” he shared. “It can discourage a person. It certainly discouraged me. So when I finally stopped doing it, I was so relieved… I knew I had to get out of the mess I was in to get on with my life and make a living.”

Bishop would find lasting love. In 1981, she married television host Lee Leonard. The union lasted until he died in 2018 at age 89.

“The secret was honesty and love, along with support – tremendous support from both sides,” she said. “We were fans of each other. We had a great time. We loved each other so much and respected each other’s work. We both knew how passionate we were about our own work.”

“He was a person who respected me, who supported me, who was there and was really honest,” she continued. “We talked all the time and we were very open. We didn’t keep secrets from each other. And I think the secret is love, respect and communication.”

Today, Bishop hopes her memoir will encourage readers, especially women, to be “their authentic selves.”