John Schneider on Losing Wife Alicia to Cancer (Exclusive)

John Schneider stares lovingly at a big mural of him and his late spouse, Alicia Allain Schneider, painted on the facet of their house in Holden, Louisiana. “Hello, my smile,” he tells it with tears in his eyes, his voice tender but damaged.

It’s simply considered one of many objects the Dukes of Hazzard star has on the property to maintain the reminiscence of Alicia — and the life they shared collectively — alive. But the sprawling rural unfold has additionally come to be what Schneider, 63, calls “a point of pain” since Alicia died from breast most cancers at age 53 on Feb. 21.

“We lived here, but we also survived here,” he tells PEOPLE on this week’s subject as a part of his first sit-down interview since Alicia’s demise. “We chased our dreams and caught them here. This place has been very important to us from the very beginning and still is.”

With so many reminders of the plans he and his companion of practically a decade will not see come to fruition, Schneider is struggling to settle for his new actuality however feeling grateful for the love they shared.

“I miss every damn thing, every day,” he says. “I have to get to the point where I look around and see where she is, not where she’s not. And I’m trying to do that, but that’s hard. Somehow I love her more every minute, but with that, somehow I miss her more every minute.”

Schneider’s love story with Alicia, a producer and proprietor of Maven Entertainment, started on Oct. 6, 2014, whereas the 2 had been assembly for lunch to focus on a movie venture. It was a gathering that nearly did not occur.

Schneider — finest identified for taking part in Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard for seven seasons, his roles in Smallville and Tyler Perry’s The Haves and Have Nots, and his nation music albums — had bother discovering the restaurant and practically canceled out of frustration, however Alicia insisted he maintain the appointment.

The two clicked immediately, exchanging spirited banter — primarily over which function Schneider ought to play within the movie — and the actor, who was separated from his ex-wife Elvira “Elly” Castle on the time, was drawn to Alicia’s fast wit and can-do angle.

“This meeting that I almost blew off, she never let me forget,” he says. “We’d laugh and say, ‘What would life have been?’ But, I knew that I had met my person. I was smitten and it was wonderful. I played the role she wanted me to play. I lost every battle, but I won because I got her.”

For the subsequent eight years, the couple cut up time between their Louisiana and Nashville properties and did nearly every thing collectively, from producing movies and writing music to racing automobiles and having fun with the outside. Alicia additionally offered help to Schneider whereas he was going by means of a contentious divorce with Castle. (He and Castle share daughter Karis, 27. Alicia had one daughter, Jessica, 27, from a earlier marriage.)

“We had been kindred spirits from the start and made every thing look simple,” he says.

Life as they knew it flipped upside-down in May 2019 when Alicia was identified with breast most cancers after discovering a lesion throughout a routine dermatologist appointment. While Alicia was present process therapy, the 2 determined to tie the knot “in the eyes of God,” since Schneider’s divorce with Castle was not but finalized. (It would not turn out to be finalized till August 2019.)

“We decided to get married after her diagnosis, not before, which I think speaks a lot to us,” he says. “The TTB, the Team to Beat, was like, ‘Hell no, cancer. You’re not splitting this up. We’re going to make it harder for you.'”

Looking again at pictures from their July 2, 2019, wedding ceremony outdoors the barn on the Holden property, Schneider says, “I’m always shocked to see that there were people there because I only remember her.” (The pair had been legally wed a number of months later, on Sept. 27, 2019.)

By 2020, Alicia’s most cancers had gone into remission and Schneider says she was “doing great.” But in December 2021, Alicia’s well being took a flip when she was concerned in a race-car crash and broke her again. Further scans confirmed her most cancers had returned and metastasized to the bone.

For his half, Schneider says he regrets doing such an exercise as a result of he might’ve doubtlessly spared his spouse extra bodily ache. “If you’ve made that dog sit, don’t take up something that can break a bone,” he says.

Though extra therapy and hospital stays adopted, nothing appeared to work — leaving Schneider heartbroken.

“The thing that hurts me the most about it is that she had to endure pain. She had to endure fear,” he says. “In my overly chivalrous mind, those are the two things I’m supposed to keep her from ever having to experience, and I couldn’t.”

In February 2023, Alicia’s well being had declined and Schneider, honoring her needs, introduced her house from the hospital for hospice care. For the subsequent six days, their family members remained by her facet.

“I’d lay at the foot of the bed and hold her hand at night, looking at her pulse, everything in me wanting it to keep going, keep beating, and everything in me wanting it to stop because she was in pain,” he says.

To cope together with his grief, Schneider started writing day by day messages to Alicia on Facebook that he calls “letters to heaven.” He’s continued to honor her legacy by launching an AliciaWear clothes line that includes phrases she used to say, like “Love That” and “Go Do.”

Schneider additionally plans to launch an album referred to as We’re Still Us as a tribute to Alicia. “The writing helps, but the writing hurts,” he explains. “I’m trying to keep some form of inspiration but it’s very hard, like a candle with a wick and no flame.”

With Alicia’s legacy on the forefront of his thoughts, Schneider hopes sharing his story will assist others who’re grieving and remind folks to let their family members know the way they really feel about them. “I could not have told Alicia Allain Schneider I love her any more than I did,” he says proudly.

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Above all, he believes that sooner or later he will probably be reunited together with his spouse.

“As bad as I hurt, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it,” he says. “Heaven is real, and I’ll get there one day and she’ll greet me. At that point, this will seem like nothing. like no time has gone by. Until then, I will endure. That’s what she’d want, and I’m going to live the rest of my life doing only that which would make her smile.”

“I’m going to ‘go do,’ as she said, even when I don’t want to, so that when I get there, she’ll be delighted with me,” he provides.