Who Is Keith A. Barmore? New Details On Beth Chapman's First Husband

Beth Chapman, reality star and wife to Duane “Dog” Chapman, has died at the age of 51 after a battle with Stage II throat cancer. The couple, who starred in Dog The Bounty Hunter together was living in Hawaii at the time of her death. Though Duane and Beth’s marriage seems like a match made in heaven, the pair only tied the knot to one another after other relationships. Duane had been married three times before marrying Beth. Beth had spent two years married to an old friend of Duane’s named Keith Barmore.

Who is Keith A. Barmore? Read on for more.

1. First marriage

Beth married Keith Barmore, an old buddy of Duane’s in 1991, after a 25 day courtship, according to The Heavy. The couple were only married for two years but they had daughter Cecily together in 1993, not long before they split up.

Beth was a bond enforcement agent.

2. Duane’s reaction

Duane had plenty of thoughts on the match and none of them were good. While he had known Barmore for years, he didn’t have a great opinion of him. He wrote about it in his memoir You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide, saying “Keith was no better as an adult than he was as a punk kid. He was a thief with a heroin habit. He would drink beer just to even out from the drugs. It just about broke my heart when I heard Beth was dating him. When I heard they got married, I got physically sick. There couldn’t have been two people in the world who were worse together than Beth and Keith.”

It got even harder for him as he learned more about the marriage from mutual friends. The news they share with him was troubling. He said “Friends told me he was abusing her something awful.”

Their relationhsip continued during their marriages to others.

3. Affair

Duane’s perspective on all of this might have been slightly skewed, however, since he admits that he was romantically and sexually involved with Beth during this time. He wrote about their ongoing affair, saying “Truth be told, Beth and I were sleeping together the entire time I was married to Tawny and throughout her marriage to Keith. Beth used to jokingly threaten to take our motel bill to the office and show it to Tawny unless I promised to show up and spend more time with her. I always had Beth book the room in her name, just in case…. Even though we were both married, Beth was still hot in pursuit of my affection.”

Duane and Beth in 2004.

4. Duane and Beth

Despite his allegations that he and Beth had a longtime affair, he had been married to Tawny since around the same time Beth married Keith. The pair had met when he arrested her on a drug offense in 1988, then hired her as his secretary. He claims the marriage was a disaster from the start and Tawny had drug problems throughout. The two had no children and separated in 1994, though they wouldn’t get an official divorce until 2002. That divorce freed him up to really pursue the relationship with Beth and they tied the knot in 2006. They had two kids together and Duane adopted Cecily, Beth’s laughter from her marriage to Barmore.

They married in 2006.

5. Cancer

Beth was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2017 and she and her husband filmed a series called Dog and Beth: The Fight of Their Lives about her treatment process. According to People, Duane told reporters after her death that “She did it her way. There’s some things that they predicted that the doctors ended up saying, ‘We’ve never, ever, seen anything like this,'” he shared. “Her way was to live. She wanted to live so bad and she fought so long, and the reason she fought, she liked life but she wanted to show people how to beat it and what to do when it got her.”

She had been ill for years.

6. Final thoughts

After Beth died this week, Duane was understandably broken up. People reports that he told reporters that he wasn’t prepared to lose her despite her recent health problems, and he’s relying on his faith to help him manage this fresh grief. In tears he told reporters: “I loved her so much,” he shared. “As Lazarus lay, Jesus said he’s not dead, he’s sleepeth. My final words are Beth isn’t dead, she’s sleeping. I hope to god there is a God. I trained myself [to think] ‘What would Jesus do?’ and I hope I’m not just talking to myself,” he added. “I hope there is a God and if there is, I’m gonna see my honey again. That’s all we can do is hope.”

Beth Chapman was 51-years-old.

Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.