Mike Wolfe is reflecting on his “once in a lifetime friendship” with late American Pickers costar Frank Fritz, saying reports of a feud between them stemmed from Fritz’s addiction issues.
“I want people to know — and he would want people to know — that we loved each other like brothers,” Wolfe told the Daily Mail in a new interview, adding that he and Fritz shared a “once in a lifetime friendship.”
The two men starred together in American Pickers on History Channel starting in 2010, traveling the country in search of valuable and meaningful antiques. But Fritz left the show in 2021 and said he was estranged from Wolfe, claiming they hadn’t spoken in two years.
But in November 2024, weeks after Fritz died of stroke complications at age 60, Wolfe revealed to People that Fritz had struggled with an opioid addiction after undergoing back surgery.
History Channel/YouTube
“The reality of it is Frank was doing a lot of things that he was not supposed to do,” Wolfe said in the new Daily Mail interview. “We fought hard for him, and we loved him, and no matter how hard and no matter how much we wanted something for him, he had to make the decision to stop on his own.”
And Wolfe said he didn’t correct the feud narrative out of “respect” for his former costar.
Wolfe also recalled visiting Fritz at the nursing facility where the latter stayed after his 2022 stroke, and though Fritz “could barely speak” at the time, the American Pickers stars bonded.
“I wanted him to know how much I loved him,” Wolfe said. “I would show him photos on my phone of things that I found, and we would talk as best we could about everything that we accomplished together. There were a lot of tears shed, and there were a lot of laughs, and there were so many beautiful things.”
Danielle Colby, another star of American Pickers, shared their memories of Fritz in a Newsweek interview last July. “Boy, we miss Frank,” they said. “We miss his laughter. We miss his sense of humor. I think his sense of humor was the most important piece of his personality that really kept us together and kept things on the same thread. And it was, man, that sense of humor is sharp. A very, very witty man.”
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