Don Diamont is soap opera royalty. His career in the industry spans nearly 40 years. The Young and the Restless alum now has a steady gig on The Bold and the Beautiful as “Dollar” Bill Spencer. Diamont’s name was previously connected to his first daytime soap, Days of Our Lives. The job led to a secret relationship with one of his well-known costars. Here’s a look inside that relationship and why it fizzled.

Don Diamont is a married father of seven

Don Diamont revealed in a throwback 1986 Soap Opera Digest interview that he was “promiscuous” in high school. But, his relationship history points to long-term couple-ships thereafter.

The Bold and the Beautiful star married Rachel Braun in 1994 after eight years of dating. The two had four sons together but ultimately went their separate ways in 2002.

A year later, Diamont had twins with this [then] girlfriend, a former co-star via The Bold and the Beautiful, Cindy Ambuehl. They married nine years later and are still together to this day.

When Diamont’s sister died in 1998, he took in his nephew who has been raised along with Diamont’s six children. However, long before all of this, Diamont’s former relationship with another co-star became his defining moment and an integral part of who he’s become.

Diamont had another relationship that began on another former soap

The B&B actor’s first acting gig in Days of Our Lives was a significant one. Diamont played Carlo Forenza for the better part of a year before his exit. Luckily, Diamont landed the role of Brad Carlton on The Young and the Restless a year later — a role he’d keep through 2009.

During his time on Days, Diamont’s character had an affair with Liz Chandler-Curtis, played by Gloria Loring. The on-screen romance eventually spilled over into real life.

According to that same Soap Opera Digest interview, Diamont was “hopelessly in love” with Loring, trying to keep it under wraps.

“There’s a time and a place for everything,” Diamont said. “It wasn’t the proper time to be unnecessarily public about our relationship.”

His vagueness referred to the fact that Loring was going through a divorce from Alan Thicke at the time, with their two young sons in mind.

“It’s not pleasant when you can’t go places and do things together,” he said, noting he lived with his parents early on but eventually moved in with Loring and her sons.

Loring’s feelings about her relationship with Diamont

In a March 2013 interview with Smashing Interviews Magazine, Loring opened up about her romance with Diamont.

“He was so special because he came into my life at a point where I was feeling quite emotionally fragile even though I was supposedly a star on television,” she said.

“I put up a good face, believe me, being Gloria Loring, but off stage I had so many doubts about my life and myself. I had all that stuff from my childhood from growing up in an alcoholic family.”

She elaborated on Diamont’s place with her sons, and in their home.

“Donald came in and was so loving and so strict with my sons about how they spoke to me and how they treated me. They had not been raised to treat me really with respect. That was an issue. Donald read them the riot act when he was in my home,” she said.

“He’d say, ‘Excuse me, do you know who you’re talking to?’ They didn’t like it, of course, because they’d think, ‘Who are you?’ But it did change things. It changed the way I saw myself.”

Loring, who is 16 years older than Diamont, said the relationship ended after three-and-a-half years but that the time was special.

“The biggest thing he did for me, in addition to treating me with such respect, was that he listened to me. I was so used to not being heard in my marriage…my feelings, my everything. All I had to do was actually have an intake of breath, and Donald would ask, ‘What do you need?'” she recalled.

When Loring and Diamont went their separate ways, they both learned a lot.

“He was so attentive, and he gave me an example of how I could start to be attentive to my own needs,” she said. “So it was another way to be in the world that I had not yet experienced, another way to be in a relationship and another way to be treated. Donald was a great gift to me. He’s a wonderful person.”

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