Andre the Giant and Wife: The Truth Behind Their Complicated Relationship

Let’s start with the lie the internet keeps telling you.

Type “Andre the Giant wife” into any search engine and you’ll get a thousand articles confidently calling Jean Christensen his spouse. Some say they married in the early ’70s. Some say the wedding was secret. Some don’t even bother with details — they just slap the label on and move on. Here’s the thing though: Andre the Giant never married anybody. Not Jean. Not anyone. He said so himself. There are no marriage records because there was no marriage. And yet here we are, decades after the man’s death, still reading the same fabricated headline on repeat.

The real story? Way more complicated. Way more human. And honestly? Way more interesting than a wedding that never happened.

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	André the Giant	Jean Christensen
Full Name	André René Roussimoff	Jean Christensen (née Gantriis)
Born	May 19, 1946, Coulommiers, France	August 15, 1949, Minnesota, USA
Heritage	French	Danish-American
Height	7’4″ (billed)	~6’3″ (in heels)
Career	Pro Wrestler, Actor	Model → WWF Public Relations
Relationship	Partners (never legally married)	Partners (never legally married)
Child Together	Robin Christensen-Roussimoff (b. 1979)	Robin Christensen-Roussimoff (b. 1979)
Death	January 28, 1993 (age 46), Paris	2008
Known For	“Eighth Wonder of the World,” WrestleMania III, The Princess Bride	Raising Robin, WWF PR

A Man Built for a Stage, Not a Home

Before we even get to Jean, you have to understand what Andre’s life actually looked like. He was on the road constantly. Not “a lot” — constantly. The WWF ran house shows nearly every night of the week back then, and Andre was the draw everywhere he went. Japan, Europe, the States, Canada. He was making Vince McMahon Sr. rich while sleeping in hotel rooms that didn’t fit his frame and drinking quantities of alcohol that would hospitalize most people.

He was billed at 7 feet 4 inches and close to 500 pounds. He had acromegaly — a pituitary condition causing the body to pump out excess growth hormone long after it should’ve stopped. His hands were enormous. His joints ached. By his late 30s, he was in daily pain that he reportedly drowned in wine rather than deal with surgically. One infamous account puts him at 119 cans of beer in a single sitting. You can fact-check that if you want, but people who knew him don’t seem shocked by it.

He was diagnosed with acromegaly around age 24 and told he probably wouldn’t make it past 40. He made it to 46. He also chose not to treat the condition because he was worried treatment would affect his wrestling career. Think about that for a second. He picked the ring over his own life.

That’s who Jean Christensen got involved with in 1974.

How They Actually Met

Jean wasn’t some star-struck fan who wandered into a meet-and-greet. She was a professional. Born in Minnesota to Danish parents — her maiden name, Gantriis, carries meaning tied to leadership and knowledge in Danish — she’d worked as a model before transitioning into public relations. She landed a job doing PR for what was then the World Wrestling Federation. That put her in proximity to the biggest names in the business, including the biggest name, literally, in the building.

When she first encountered Andre, she said there wasn’t some immediate spark. What she did notice was something she’d never experienced before: she had to look up to see someone’s face. Standing about 6’3″ herself, in heels, Jean Christensen had never met a man taller than her until she met Andre the Giant. That detail alone — that tiny, almost absurd observation — tells you more about their dynamic than any romantic gloss ever could.

They were from completely different worlds. She was Minnesota-born, Danish heritage, navigating a male-dominated industry with professionalism. He was a nomadic French wrestling machine with a condition doctors couldn’t fully control. And yet something clicked.

By the mid-1970s, they were involved. Nobody, not even the people who were around them, seemed to fully document when exactly things turned personal. That’s by design. Andre didn’t talk about his private life. Jean didn’t either. They were private in an era before privacy was something you had to fight for.

The Pregnancy Nobody Expected

Here’s where the story takes a genuinely surprising turn.

Jean had been told — and apparently believed — that Andre was sterile. Acromegaly does that. The hormonal disruption from excess growth hormone plays havoc with fertility. So when Jean realized she was pregnant in the late 1970s, it blindsided her. She said as much in a 1990 interview.

It blindsided Andre too. But not in the same way. He didn’t believe the child was his.

So she took him to court. A paternity test — reportedly confirmed in 1981 — proved that Robin was Andre’s biological daughter. After that, Andre began paying child support. It started at $750 per month and eventually went up to $1,000. For a man reportedly earning what would be millions in today’s dollars, that was… not generous. But it was something.

Robin was born in 1979. In France, actually. Jean was living there at the time. But she raised Robin back in the States — Seattle, Washington, specifically — far away from the arena lights and the kayfabe chaos her father inhabited.

The “Marriage” Myth, Explained

Okay, so why does literally every other website call Jean his wife?

Part of it is lazy journalism. Part of it is fan romanticism — people want Andre’s story to have warmth in it, and a marriage is warmer than “they had a complicated situation.” Part of it is that some sources in the ’70s and ’80s wrestling world referred to Jean as his wife because that was the easy shorthand, and it stuck.

But the record is clear. Andre himself stated he was never married. There are no legal documents. Robin has confirmed it in interviews. Wrestling Inc., Grunge, Wikipedia, and virtually every credible outlet that looked into it landed on the same conclusion: they were long-term partners who shared a child, and that’s it.

That’s not a lesser story. That’s just the true one.

What they had was real. It was complicated and full of distance and legal friction and co-parenting tension, but it was real. Calling it a marriage doesn’t honor what they had — it just makes it fit a box everyone’s more comfortable with.

Robin Barely Knew Her Father

This is the part that sticks with you.

Jean told a reporter that by the time Robin was 12, Andre had seen his daughter exactly four times. Once as a baby. Once around 18 months. Once at age four. And then again briefly in November of 1991 — for five minutes. Five minutes. That’s what a decade-plus of fatherhood looked like.

Robin, at age 12, described her dad as “kind of a stranger in a way… it’s like he’s my dad, but he isn’t, you know?”

She met him sometimes at arenas when his touring schedule brought him near enough. A couple of ring-side visits. A few court appearances. That was the relationship. Jean raised Robin alone in Seattle while Andre continued the life that had always consumed him.

And then he died.

January 28, 1993. Andre was in Paris for his own father’s funeral — Boris Roussimoff had just passed. Andre stayed a little longer to spend time with his mother on her birthday. The night before he died, he played cards with old friends in Molien. He came back to his hotel room at the Hotel De La Tremoille around 1 AM. His chauffeur and the hotel manager found him in the afternoon. He’d died in his sleep. Heart failure. The acromegaly he’d refused to treat had done exactly what doctors warned it would do.

He was 46. Robin was 14. She found out through an answering machine message.

She left the house for hours to process it. Came back. And grew up carrying the legacy of a man she’d barely known.

What Andre Left Behind (And Who He Was Protecting Against)

Andre left his estate to Robin. That part, at least, he got right.

But here’s the detail that tells you everything about the state of things between him and Jean by that point: he structured the inheritance as a trust that Robin couldn’t touch until she turned 30. In 2009. Sixteen years after his death.

Why the delay? He was reportedly worried that Jean would gain control of the money if Robin accessed it while still young. That’s not a small footnote. That’s a man, from beyond the grave, actively protecting his daughter’s inheritance from her own mother.

Whatever warmth had existed between them in the mid-1970s had clearly curdled into something colder by the end. The $750-a-month support payments. The paternity battle. The missed birthdays and five-minute visits. It wasn’t exactly The Princess Bride levels of romance.

Andre’s estate was valued at roughly $5 million at the time of death. Robin eventually received a portion of it, and through a licensing deal with WWE — which uses Andre’s name and likeness constantly — she continues to earn royalties to this day. She controls what gets made in his name. She has his Hall of Fame ring. She guards his story.

Jean died in 2008, the year before the trust opened.

What Happened to Jean

Jean Christensen never became a public figure in her own right. She didn’t write a book. She didn’t give endless interviews. She raised her daughter, kept working in whatever capacity she could, and stayed out of the spotlight that had burned around Andre for his entire adult life.

The irony is that Jean was a capable, independent woman long before she met Andre. She’d modeled. She’d built a PR career in a male-dominated industry in an era when that wasn’t easy. She was tall, sharp, and professional. She just happened to become famous for being adjacent to someone else’s fame — which is the oldest story in the world for women who end up connected to legends.

She’s remembered mostly as a question: was she his wife? The answer is no. But she was something. The mother of his only child. The woman who took him to court and won. The one who raised Robin in Seattle while he was doing body slams in Tokyo. That counts.

Robin Today: Carrying What’s Left

Robin Christensen-Roussimoff is now in her mid-40s and lives quietly. She participates in wrestling conventions occasionally. She was part of the 2018 HBO documentary on her father’s life. She’s talked publicly about wishing things had been different — that he’d lived longer, that maybe he could have come to her graduation, that she could have really known who he was.

She never got that chance. Jean gave her a stable childhood. Andre gave her the famous last name and a trust fund she couldn’t touch for a decade and a half.

“Maybe had he lived longer, I might have had a closer relationship with him,” Robin said. “Perhaps he would’ve attended my graduation, or been proud of my successes. I will never truly understand him as a person.”

That quote should be the thing you remember from all of this. Not the “wife” headlines. Not the myth about 119 beers. This. A daughter who barely knew her father and has spent her whole adult life making peace with that.

Final Words

Here’s the honest opinion, and you can disagree if you want: the internet’s obsession with labeling Jean Christensen as Andre’s “wife” is actually disrespectful to both of them. It erases the real, complicated, messy reality of what happened between two people who clearly mattered to each other but never fully figured it out. It turns a human story into a fairy tale that didn’t exist.

Andre the Giant was a lonely man who built walls as thick as his chest. He didn’t let most people close. Jean got closer than almost anyone, gave him a daughter, fought for that daughter in court, and then raised her by herself for the rest of her life. That’s not a wife’s story. That’s something harder and less romantic and more real.

The legend of Andre the Giant is massive, and it should be. WrestleMania III. The Princess Bride. The drinking stories. Travel. The genuine affection people had for him everywhere he went.

But Jean Christensen deserves her name said right. Not “Andre the Giant’s wife.” Just Jean. A woman who did something actually difficult — raised a famous man’s kid, alone, with dignity — and never got credit for it.

That’s the story. Took you long enough to find the real version.

FAQs

1. Was Andre the Giant ever married?

No. He stated this himself, and no legal records of any marriage exist. The “wife” thing is a myth created by fan sites and sloppy reporting that just kept getting copied.

2. Who was Jean Christensen?

She was a Minnesota-born woman of Danish descent who worked as a model before moving into PR for the WWF in the early 1970s. She became Andre’s long-term partner and the mother of his only child.

3. Did Andre know Robin was his daughter right away?

He did not. He initially denied paternity. Jean took him to court, a paternity test confirmed it, and he began paying court-ordered child support — starting at $750 a month.

4. How many times did Robin meet her father?

By the time she was 12, Jean told reporters Robin had met Andre four times. By Robin’s own account she estimates around five encounters total — some in courtrooms, some at arenas near his tour stops.

5. Why was the inheritance locked in a trust until Robin was 30?

Andre reportedly worried that Jean would gain control of the money before Robin was old enough to manage it herself. The trust didn’t open until 2009 — sixteen years after his death.

6. What did Robin inherit?

She received a portion of Andre’s estate, valued at roughly $5 million at the time of death. She also has a licensing arrangement with WWE and earns royalties whenever Andre’s name or image is used commercially.

7. When and how did Andre die?

He died January 28, 1993, in a Paris hotel room from congestive heart failure — essentially his heart giving out from decades of untreated acromegaly. He was in France for his own father’s funeral and had extended his stay to be with his mother. He died in his sleep.

8. Why did Andre refuse treatment for his acromegaly?

He was afraid that treating the condition would negatively affect his wrestling career. He was diagnosed around age 24 and chose to live with the consequences rather than risk what the ring gave him.

9. When did Jean Christensen die?

Jean died in 2008 — one year before the trust opened and Robin could access her inheritance.

10. Did Robin and Andre have any kind of relationship at all?

A limited one. Robin has said she spoke with him in some capacity, and she has warm memories of the brief times they were together. But the distance — emotional and physical — was enormous, and she’s spoken openly about the grief of never really knowing him.

11. What is Robin doing now?

She lives privately, appears at wrestling conventions occasionally, and serves as the gatekeeper of Andre’s legacy. She can approve or reject uses of her father’s name and likeness and receives royalties from WWE.

12. Was Jean ever public about her relationship with Andre?

She gave at least one notable interview in 1990 where she discussed Robin’s limited time with Andre. Otherwise she kept a low profile throughout her life and didn’t seek celebrity of her own.

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