The man Rock Hudson reportedly called his true love is speaking out, telling how the pair kept their gay relationship a secret from Hollywood, Fox News reports.

Lee Garlington, who dated Hudson from 1962 to 1965, reveals all to People magazine, one of a number of friends and acquaintances sharing fond memories of the movie icon on the 30th anniversary of his death from AIDS.

Garlington says he met Hudson as an extra on one of his movies.

“He was the biggest movie star in the world and the rumors were that he was gay,” he said. “So I thought ‘Let me get an eye on him.’ I stood outside his cottage on the Universal lot, pretending to read Variety, which was probably upside down at the time. He walked out and down the street. He looked back once. That was it.”

After a previous relationship ended, he got an unexpected call from one of Hudson’s friends requesting a meeting. Garlington agreed, but as he was intimidated, both by Hudson’s celebrity and 6′ 4″ stature, nothing happened during their first encounter.

Nevertheless, the pair did decide to start dating.

“I’d come over after work, spend the night and leave the next morning,” Garlington says. “I’d sneak out at 6 a.m. in my Chevy Nova and coast down the street without turning on the engine so the neighbours wouldn’t hear. We thought we were being so clever.”

Although the two never discussed Hudson publicly coming out, and both men always squired female dates to movie premieres, Garson does recall sharing a knowing wink with Paul Newman, who may have guessed he and Hudson were involved.

In 1965, Garlington and Hudson went their separate ways.

“One of the reasons we went our own way because in a way I wanted a father figure and he was not strong enough,” he says. “Rock wasn’t a real strong personality. He was a gentle giant.”
Garlington says they gradually lost touch by the time it was revealed that Hudson had AIDS.

I called up the people taking care of him but they said he was so sick that he wouldn’t know who I was and it was best to remember him how he had been before.”

After Hudson’s death, Garlington read in Hudson’s biography that the actor had referred to him as his “true love.”

“I broke down and cried,” he recalls. “I just lost it. He said his mother and I were the only people he ever loved. I had no idea I meant that much to him.”