Burt Reynolds’ First Girlfriend Talks Reuniting With the Actor — “He Was My First Love and He Says I Was the Love of His Life”

In an exclusive interview with Closer Weekly, on newsstands now, Burt Reynolds’ high school girlfriend, Ann Lawlor Scurry, opens up about reuniting with long-lost love Burt at The Palm Beach Book Festival on April 2.

Gushing about their relationship, Ann exclusively tells Closer, “He was my first love. And he says I was the love of his life.” Burt even signed a copy of his new memoir, But Enough About Me, for Ann, writing, “I loved you then, and I love you now!”

Time hasn’t worn away the feelings between Burt and Ann, his first and longest-lasting love, whom he met at Palm Beach High School in the early 50s and dated steadily for two years.

Burt and Ann on April 2.

“I felt on top of the world, being his girlfriend,” says Ann of her football star halfback beau. “He was very popular. The people who didn’t like him were jealous.”

Ann reveals to Closer that they went to a beach party for their first date, and their first kiss soon followed at Everglades Island, “which is where everybody went to park,” she explains, adding that “it wasn’t my first kiss but it was my first real kiss!”

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She insists that their romance was for real, admitting that they even talked about having children. “We even decided what our son’s name would be. Rick Reynolds, because Burt said it sounded like a great name for a football player.”

She was even close with Burt’s family, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with them. “His parents treated me like their daughter,” Ann tells Closer.

Burt and Ann on April 2.

“It was not just a crush — not just a little thing you do for a while and forget,” Ann explains to Closer. “It was intense and serious — I was so in love with him that I thought we would always be together, but that’s not the way life is meant to be, I guess.”

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Once Burt was ready for college, he had to choose between football and theater, and “he was willing to give up on acting for me,” says Ann, who was living in Annapolis, Md., when Burt was offered a gridiron scholarship in Maryland.

Burt passed on the scholarship, and his acting career took off after he moved to NYC. Yet he still carried a torch for Ann. They even had a summer fling in Florida when both were unwed in 1975. “In the end we just faded away,” Ann confides to Closer. “We never really forgot each other — we just got on with our lives.”

For the full interview with Burt Reynolds’ first love, including what he wrote in her high school yearbook, pick up the latest issue of Closer Weekly, on newsstands now!