Actress, Designer, and Family Matriarch: Patricia Lee Lyon

Basic Information

Early Years and Beginnings

Patricia Lee Lyon stepped into the world in Indiana, a Midwestern start that hints at sturdy roots and quiet resolve. By the early 1960s she was orbiting performance circles; a 1961 pageant note ties her to an Indiana Junior Miss title, emblematic of poise and stage presence already taking shape. The next decade would broaden that stage from local lights to television sets and film cameras.

She chose the credit “Patricia Lyon” for her on-screen work—a clean, elegant signature that fit the era. Like many working actors of her generation, she moved between episodic television and feature projects, building a résumé that was less about fanfare and more about steady craft. It’s a portrait familiar to anyone who loves the industry: auditions, day calls, and the unruly weather of opportunity.

Marriage to Robert Fuller and Family Life

On December 20, 1962, Patricia married actor Robert Fuller, a rising star who would become synonymous with TV Westerns and emergency-room drama. Their marriage unfolded at the height of Fuller’s television fame—schedules tight, spotlights bright, and a home life that needed as much choreography as any set. Together they raised three children: Rob (often listed as Robert Jr.), Christine, and Patrick.

The family grew up in a swirl of scripts and schooldays. Anecdotes and family recollections reflect the rhythm of a household anchored by two parents balancing public work with private life. After more than two decades together, Patricia and Robert divorced in 1984, closing a long chapter but not the narrative threads that kept their families connected through their children and shared history.

Children

On-Screen and Onstage Work

Patricia’s on-screen path reflects the arc of a working actress in the 1960s through the late 1980s. She is credited on TV, including the long-running family series My Three Sons, and in feature films spaced across two decades. The list is compact, but the timeline shows stamina: a career that lingered, reappeared, and evolved—a thread she kept weaving even as her family life took center stage.

Her creative work didn’t stop at the studio gate. In Jupiter, Florida, she performed in productions at the Burt Reynolds Theatre, a regional stage that brought professional-grade performance to local audiences. Theatre is proximity—a voice unamplified, a gesture read in real time—and it’s telling that Patricia kept returning to it. It suggests an artist in love with the immediacy of live storytelling.

Selected Screen and Stage Credits

Design Career and Community Ties in Jupiter, Florida

Patricia’s second act arrived with fabric swatches, floor plans, and a designer’s eye. Under the banner of Patricia Fuller Interiors, she built a business in Jupiter, Florida—one of those sunlit coastal towns where taste has room to breathe. Interior design is a kind of storytelling, too; the lines of a sofa, the echo of a lamp’s arc, the color of a wall after 4 p.m.—every choice is a sentence in a room’s biography. Patricia’s professional pivot from screen to space reads like a continuation rather than a departure. The same sensibility that shapes a performance can shape a home: proportion, light, character.

Her work at the Burt Reynolds Theatre sits comfortably alongside her design practice. Both rely on the choreography of elements—actors and props on one hand, textures and tones on the other. It’s a portrait of a creative who didn’t need fame to validate the work. Instead, she moved steadily between mediums, evolving without fanfare, living where art meets utility.

Selected Timeline

Legacy and Remembrance

Patricia Lee Lyon’s legacy is quiet and textured. She lived between footlights and fabric swatches, stitching together a life that blended performance and design, family and craft. Her name often appears beside Robert Fuller’s, and that is part of her story, but not the whole of it. The whole includes the discipline of a working actress, the nerve to reinvent professionally, and the devotion of a mother whose children still anchor public references to her life.

The allure of Hollywood tends to flatten complexity, turning lives into loglines. Patricia’s path resists that flattening. You see the contours in the decades—the early TV credits, a film in ’72, another in ’89, the theatre roles that kept the muscles warm, the business launched in a seaside town where clients became collaborators. It’s a measured spotlight, not a blinding one—a life lived in full color, at normal human scale.

FAQ

Who was Patricia Lee Lyon?

An American actress and interior designer, she worked in television, film, and regional theatre, later running a design business in Jupiter, Florida.

What was she best known for?

Screen credits including My Three Sons, Country Love (1972), and Blowing Hot and Cold (1989), along with her work at the Burt Reynolds Theatre.

Whom did she marry?

She married actor Robert Fuller on December 20, 1962; they divorced in 1984.

How many children did she have?

Three: Robert (Rob) Fuller Jr., Christine Fuller, and Patrick Fuller.

Where did she live later in life?

In Jupiter, Florida, where she also operated Patricia Fuller Interiors and performed in regional theatre.

When did she die?

Records report January 6, 1993, though some accounts list 1994 as the year of death.

Did she continue acting after her marriage?

Yes, with credits spanning from 1960s television to late-1980s film and regional theatre work.

Did she receive major awards?

No widely cited major awards are associated with her; her career reflects steady, professional work rather than high-profile accolades.