Personal Life and Family
Upon retiring, Dawson took up residence in Beverly Hills, California, with his wife since 1991, the former Gretchen Johnson, whom he met when she was a member of one of the contestant families on Family Feud in the spring of 1981. They had a daughter named Shannon Nicole Dawson. Dawson announced this and showed a picture of his daughter on an episode in the 1994 version of the Feud — as he was greeting one of the contestants who happened to be a former contestant of his while he was a panelist on The Match Game. The episode was featured on the 25th Anniversary of Family Feud as No. 14 on the Game Show Network's Top 25 Feud Moments.
He had two sons, Mark Dawson (born 1960) and Gary Dawson (born 1962), from his first marriage, to Diana Dors, which ended in divorce. He also had five grandchildren.
Read more about this topic: Richard Dawson
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