Who are Andy Griffith’s Children?
For many fans growing up with The Andy Griffith Show, Andy Griffith was the quintessential “TV Dad.” But when the filming was done, Andy was a father not to the millions of kids watching at home, but to the two children that he and his wife, fellow performer Barbara Edwards, adopted: daughter Dixie and son Sam.
Andy was “fun-loving, full of life, introspective, a perfectionist, decisive, so many things,” Dixie recalled when speaking with The Cheatham County Exchange in 2024. She described her father as “bigger than life in many ways,” and a “very complicated individual” who loved animals, gardening and his antique car collection.
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So, who are Dixie and her brother, Sam?
Sam Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith Jr. was born in December 1957. When he came into Andy and Barbara’s lives, Edwards had already stepped away from acting. She and Andy had a deal that if one hit it big, the other would focus on raising the family. And so she did.
However, Andy and Barbara’s marriage would fall apart. The two divorced in 1972. Sam, who grew up out of the public eye, relocated to Los Angeles to work as a real estate developer.
Sam married Renee Griffith in November 1991, but according to the Los Angeles Times, she accused him of domestic abuse a month after their wedding. They divorced shortly after he pleaded no contest to two counts of assault.
In January 1996, Sam Griffith died of alcoholism at age 38. Andy had paid for Sam to go to rehab twice, but they were estranged at the time of his death.
“My brother had some troubles, but it wasn’t my dad’s fault,” Dixie told Closer in 2022. “[Sam’s passing] affected him on a very deep level.”
Dixie Griffith
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Dixie Nann Griffith was born in September 1959. She grew up knowing that her father was famous, but had an everyday life. “I thought he was an absolutely great dad,” she told Closer.
“When my parents divorced [in 1972], my dad rented a house. The Bing Crosby estate was up for sale, and he bought it,” Dixie told The Cheatham County Exchange. “I went to live with my dad from age 13 to 18 and then again from 20 to 22 in the guest house. Then I got married and moved to Colorado.”
Dixie worked in the hotel industry and volunteered. During the COVID-19 era, she fostered dogs.
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She had three daughters and said that Andy was a loving grandfather. “The girls and I went out for Christmas one year [to his home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina], and he was so thrilled and proud to have all his granddaughters with him. My dad doted on my three girls.”
Andy Griffith died in 2012 at age 86. Barbara Edwards died in 1980 at age 53
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