Melissa Gilbert & Rob Lowe's Short-Lived Romance Was Plagued By Affairs

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It's no secret that '80s stars from the Brat Pack and beyond were constantly entangled in some form of complex love story. Melissa Gilbert and Rob Lowe's reads like the plot of a soap opera. The "Little House on the Prairie" star and "The Outsiders" actor had a whirlwind romance from 1981 to 1987, which was characterized more by their tendency to be unfaithful than their actual love for each other. According to Gilbert, Lowe cheated first. She described how she caught him snuggling up to his "Hotel New Hampshire" co-star, Nastassja Kinski, in her 2010 autobiography, "Prairie Tale." After a hotel operator let it slip to Gilbert that Lowe was staying in Kinski's room, she flew to Montreal — where they were filming — to tell him off. It was there that she let him know, "You don't f**k with America's sweetheart."

They purportedly made up after that, but Lowe was later grilled about his affairs in a 1984 interview with Joan Rivers. The comedian and TV host bluntly asked Lowe why she saw him at a nightclub with another girl while he was in a serious relationship with Gilbert. "It was not me at my best, okay?" he told her coyly. She leaned into him more, saying, "There are so many rumors that ... at 20 you've had affairs with every leading lady you've been in a movie with." (Lowe also cheated with Princess Stephanie of Monaco and his "St. Elmo's Fire" co-star Demi Moore). While Rivers expressed sympathy for Gilbert, Lowe asserted that "she's no saint."

In her memoir, Melissa Gilbert admitted to discovering her "ballsy side" while working on a film in Chicago and cheating on Rob Lowe with his good friend and "Class" co-star, John Cusack. "We ended up having a little fling, which I kept from Rob. It was my own private 'screw you,'" she wrote. "Only John and I ever knew about it." She had another affair with an assistant director while filming 1985's "Sylvester." While she admittedly didn't intend to be unfaithful to Lowe at the time, Gilbert said her loneliness during filming motivated the affair. "I got a taste of what Rob went through on 'The Hotel New Hampshire,' and he got a taste of what I experienced on the other end," she wrote.

Even after ravaging their relationship with infidelity, it was only after finding out she was pregnant in 1987, as Gilbert revealed in her memoir, that Lowe — who had proposed to her that same year — broke things off, admitting he wasn't ready for fatherhood or marriage. Even more tragedy struck Gilbert's life when she had a miscarriage soon after their final split. While Lowe has stayed fairly quiet about his past relationship with the TV legend, Gilbert described it on the "I Choose Me" podcast as "tumultuous," noting that they were both so young at the time.