Phyllis Gates, the one-time talent agency secretary who married Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson in the 1950s and later insisted that she married him out of love and not to cover up his homosexuality, has died.She was 80.

Gates, who had a career as an interior designer after her brief marriage to Hudson, died of complications of lung cancer January 4 at her home in Marina del Rey on the west side of Los Angeles.

Born in Dawson, Minn., in 1925 and reared on a 600-acre farm, Gates had worked as a sales clerk, flight attendant, and a talent agent’s secretary in New York City before landing a job as a secretary for influential Hollywood agent Henry Willson, who represented Hudson, Tab Hunter, Rory Calhoun and a string of other young stars.

In October 1954, the petite Gates met the handsome Hudson for the first time when he walked into Willson’s office.

A few days later, Willson invited Gates to have drinks and dinner with him and Hudson. She did, and the next day, Hudson asked her out.

Soon their romance was leaked to the press, Hollywood Reporter columnist Mike Connolly colloquially noting that “Rock Hudson has been enjoying hideaway dinners with Henry Willson’s purty secy, Phyllis Gates.”

In early 1955, Gates accepted Hudson’s offer to move into the rustic two-bedroom house he had bought in the hills above Sunset Boulevard. “Living with Phyllis helped normalize Rock’s reputation in Hollywood,” Sara David son wrote in the 1986 book “Rock Hudson: His Story.”

At the time, Hudson’s career was soaring, but he was struggling to keep his private life private – with Willson’s help. The agent had fended off a blackmailer who said he had incriminating photos, and Willson later learned that Confidential magazine was working on an expose of Hudson’s homosexuality.

Even Life magazine in September 1955, ran a cover story on Hudson – “Hollywood’s Most Handsome Bachelor” – reporting that “Fans are urging 29-year-old Hudson to get married – or explain why not.”

In early November 1955, Gates accepted Hudson’s surprise proposal.

“I was very much in love,”she told Ms. Davidson.”He was charming, his career was red hot, he was gorgeous … How many women would have said no?”

On November 9, 1955, not long after Hudson finished work on the movie “Giant,” he and Gates were married in Santa Barbara, with Willson and three friends in attendance. Willson had arranged the secret wedding, but minutes after the ceremony ended, he called Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.

After a honeymoon in Jamaica, the couple settled into married life. She made him meals of meat loaf and mashed potatoes; he bought her jewelry and beautiful clothes.

One magazine story, titled “When Day Is Done – Heaven Is Waiting,” quoted Hudson as saying, “When I count my blessings, my marriage tops the list.”

At first, Gates reveled in the life – movie premieres, limousines, A-list parties, first-class travel, and luxury hotels. But cracks began to appear. Their sex life, Gates wrote in “My Husband, Rock Hudson,” in 1987, was “brief and hurried,” and Hudson once told her that “all women are dirty.” She also fielded phone calls from young men, whom Hudson dismissed as “fans.” He would disappear for hours and not explain where he had been.

Hudson also was capable of dark moods and sudden rages. He hit her twice, she wrote, and once choked her.

Gates began seeing a psychologist. Hudson, she wrote, had “virtually abandoned” her for months when she was ill with infectious hepatitis in 1957 while he was working on a film in Italy. He refused counseling to save the marriage.

Gates filed for divorce in 1958, charging mental cruelty; Hudson did not contest. Gates received a relatively small alimony of $250 a week for 10 years.

Gates received confirmation of his secret life, she wrote, when one of her closest friends told her that Hudson had been unfaithful to her, with an Italian actor, during the filming of “A Farewell to Arms” in Italy.

As Hudson lay dying of AIDS in 1985, age 59, he reportedly said he had loved only two people in his life. One of them was Gates.

She never remarried.