Stan Cadwallader: Where Is Jim Nabors’ Husband Now?

For 38 years, Stan Cadwallader shared his life with Jim Nabors, the actor and singer loved around the world as Gomer Pyle. They married in 2013, in a small and quiet ceremony that made news across the United States. When Nabors died in 2017, Cadwallader stepped even further away from public view.

Many fans still ask a gentle question: where is Stan Cadwallader now? The public record gives a clear outline, even if the details are few. He stayed in Hawaii, the home he and Nabors chose together, sold the large homes they had shared, and kept the private life he always preferred.

Quick Facts

A Firefighter in Honolulu

Unlike his famous husband, Stan Cadwallader did not come from show business. He was a firefighter in Honolulu, Hawaii, a man whose working life was built on public service, long shifts, and helping strangers on their worst days. Profiles consistently describe this as his career before and during the early years of his relationship with Nabors.

He was born in 1948, which made him about 64 years old at the time of his wedding and roughly 18 years younger than Nabors. Beyond that, reliable public details about his childhood, education, and family are very limited. He never sold his story, never wrote a book, and never built a public image for himself, so the early chapters of his life remain his own.

That ordinary background mattered to the couple’s life together. Friends and reports describe a man comfortable far from cameras, happy with home, land, and quiet routines. In a relationship with one of the most recognised faces on American television, Cadwallader was the anchor in normal life.

Meeting Jim Nabors in 1975

Cadwallader met Jim Nabors in Honolulu in 1975. Nabors, born on June 12, 1930, in Sylacauga, Alabama, was already a star. His kind hearted gas station attendant Gomer Pyle had begun on The Andy Griffith Show in 1962 and then led his own series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., from 1964. His catchphrases were famous, and his rich baritone singing voice had made him a successful recording artist as well.

Nabors had been visiting Hawaii since the 1960s and made the islands his home in the 1970s, moving from California to Honolulu. It was in Honolulu that he met Cadwallader, who was then working as a firefighter. The two men began a relationship that would last for the rest of Nabors’ life.

They built that life mostly in Hawaii. Nabors owned a large macadamia plantation on Maui for about 25 years before selling it to the National Tropical Botanical Garden, keeping links to the land, and the couple later lived in an oceanfront home in Honolulu. Their Hawaii life was comfortable but deliberately low key, built around home and close friends rather than parties and premieres.

Marriage After 38 Years Together

For most of their decades together, marriage was not legally open to them, and Nabors had never publicly discussed his private life with the press. He later explained that he had never made a big secret of it among people who knew him. It was personal, he said, and he simply had not told the wider public.

That changed when Washington state legalised same-sex marriage in December 2012. The couple travelled from Hawaii to Seattle and married on January 15, 2013, at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. A judge performed the small private ceremony in their hotel room, with a few friends as witnesses. Nabors was 82 and Cadwallader was 64.

Speaking to Hawaii News Now afterwards, Nabors said he was not ashamed of people knowing, and that the relationship had simply been a personal thing. He said he felt very blessed to have had a partner of 38 years, and very happy. He also made a practical point: after 38 years together, the couple had no legal rights as a couple, and marriage gave them that protection at last.

Life Together and Nabors’ Final Years

Married life for the couple looked much like the life before it: quiet, in Hawaii, away from the spotlight. Nabors was by then retired from regular performing, though he remained a beloved figure, especially for his long tradition of singing Back Home Again in Indiana before the Indianapolis 500, a role he filled almost every year from 1972 until his final performance in 2014.

His health had been fragile for a long time. In 1994 he had received a liver transplant after a serious illness with hepatitis B, and the treatment that followed left his immune system suppressed. He also had open heart surgery in 2012. Through these years Cadwallader was his partner at home and his support through recovery and decline.

Jim Nabors died at their home in Honolulu on November 30, 2017, at the age of 87. It was Cadwallader, his husband, who confirmed the death to the press. He told reporters that Nabors’ health had been declining for about a year. The simple statement, and his presence at the end, closed a partnership of 42 years.

Where Is Stan Cadwallader Now?

Since 2017, Cadwallader has lived exactly as privately as he did before, only more so. He has given no memoir interviews, launched no public projects, and made no regular public appearances. Reports agree on the broad outline: he remained in Hawaii and kept his life quiet, among the places and people he and Nabors had shared.

The couple’s large Honolulu estate was sold after Nabors’ death, for a reported 12 million dollars. Later, the couple’s 170 acre retreat near Hana, on Maui, was listed for sale at 4.5 million dollars, with property records naming Cadwallader as the owner. The Hana land, off the famous Hana Highway, includes ocean views, fruit trees, large old banyan trees, and two homes. The sales suggest a man steadily simplifying and winding down the large property holdings of their shared life.

At the same time, he has not disappeared completely. In an online account of a documentary film project about historic theatre organs, the makers describe visiting and interviewing Cadwallader at the Maui ranch he and Nabors had bought in the 1970s. They describe him showing them around the land, sharing memories of his and Jim’s friendships and travels. It is a small, warm glimpse: a man at home on his ranch, willing to talk about the past for a project he cared about, and otherwise content out of view.

No reliable reports suggest a new public career, a new marriage, or a move away from Hawaii. The most accurate answer to where Stan Cadwallader is now is also the simplest: in Hawaii, living privately, as he always did, now as the keeper of a remarkable shared history.

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FAQs

How did Stan Cadwallader meet Jim Nabors?

They met in Honolulu in 1975, when Cadwallader was working as a firefighter there and Nabors was making Hawaii his home after his television fame as Gomer Pyle.

When did Stan Cadwallader and Jim Nabors marry?

They married on January 15, 2013, in a small private ceremony at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle, about a month after same-sex marriage became legal in Washington state. They had already been together for 38 years.

What did Stan Cadwallader do for a living?

He was a firefighter with the Honolulu fire service. He never worked in entertainment and kept a private life throughout his relationship with Nabors.

Where does Stan Cadwallader live now?

He is reported to still live in Hawaii. After Nabors died in 2017, the couple’s Honolulu estate was sold, and their Maui retreat near Hana was later listed for sale with Cadwallader named as owner. He has been interviewed at the Maui ranch in recent years and otherwise stays out of public view.

Final Thoughts

Stan Cadwallader’s life with Jim Nabors spanned one of the great changes in American life. They met in 1975, when a relationship like theirs had no legal standing and little public acceptance, and they were still together in 2013, when they could finally marry in a small hotel room ceremony that Nabors described with simple happiness.

His life after 2017 follows the same pattern as his life before fame touched it: work done quietly, love kept private, and home placed above attention. For fans of Jim Nabors, knowing that his husband is settled in Hawaii, among the land and memories they shared for 42 years, is a fitting and peaceful answer.

Featured photo: Jim Nabors – photo by Sgt. Scott Whittington, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons