EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW: Gary Coleman's Ex-Wife: 'I'm Not A Gold Digger'
June 29 2010, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
She’s sold interviews about her life with Gary Coleman and posed for photographs with him while he was on his deathbed.
But Shannon Price, ex-wife of the actor, wants the world to know that she was not with the Diff’rent Strokes star for his money.
“I’m not a gold digger,” Price told RadarOnline.com in an exclusive video interview “I never took advantage of Gary’s money,” adding that she always asked his permission before she bought anything.
“I had that much respect for him because I knew the extent of how many people took advantage of him.”
Price said she married Gary for love, not money, and claims she didn’t even recognize Coleman when they first met!
“When I met Gary, I never knew who he was, never even knew his name,” she revealed. “I kept calling him ‘Shorty’ for awhile because I forgot.”
Price says that Gary moved to Utah because he “found real love,” and she was his only romantic relationship and called her, “The one,” in an interview six months after their marriage.
Since Gary’s death at age 42 on May 28th, Shannon has been slammed in the media for allegedly selling deathbed photos of her ex-husband and for her bizarrely unemotional reaction to his sudden passing. But she says she’s grieving in her own way.
“Everyone says I’m not emotional, but I am, I have a different way of feeling and grieving than other people and I just don’t like to do it in front of people,” Shannon told RadarOnline.com. “But I do grieve in my own way.”
The couple’s relationship had been rocky over the years, with a string of domestic violence arrests, including one against Price in July 2009 and Coleman in January 2010. The union ending in a secret divorce in 2008, but Price says their marriage was not as toxic as it seemed.
“Every couple gets in arguments, if you didn’t it would be very unhealthy. It would be a dream if couples didn’t argue,” she told RadarOnline.com.
“Gary and I didn’t think clearly with some of the decisions we had made and we did let our emotions get the best of us sometimes,” she admitted. “But our love for each other kept us going no matter what. We were always still by each other’s side at the end of the day.”
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Despite it all, Shannon says that Gary will always be the love of her life.
“I just want the world to know that I will never be able to find anyone like Gary. He really was my life, he’s what made me tick, he’s what made my heart beat, he’s what made my world go round. And I’ll never forget that.”
