André the Giant was the most physically imposing figure in professional wrestling history. Seven feet four inches tall. Over 500 pounds at his peak. His gigantism was caused by a tumor on his pituitary gland that went untreated his entire life. By his early forties his knees were gone, his back was failing, and every move he made caused him pain he never publicly acknowledged.
Jean Christensen was one of the few people who knew him before any of that mattered.
She met André René Roussimoff in 1974 while working in the WWF’s public relations department. She was a Minnesota woman of Danish descent who had moved from modeling into sports entertainment PR at a time when almost no women held that role in the industry. She and André had a daughter in 1979. They never married. André died in 1993. Jean died in 2008.
Almost everything in those compressed sentences contains a story that nobody has properly told.
Minnesota to the Wrestling Industry
Jean Christensen was born on August 15, 1949, in Minnesota. Her family surname was Gantriis, reflecting her Danish heritage. She grew up in the American Midwest with the kind of upbringing that produces people who work steadily without needing to be seen doing it.
In the early 1970s she worked as a model. She was notably tall for a woman, sources placing her height between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 10 inches depending on the source, with at least one placing her considerably taller. Her height and presence helped her in modeling, but the career trajectory that defined her life came when she pivoted into public relations.
She joined the WWF, then called the World Wide Wrestling Federation, as a public relations professional at a pivotal moment in the organization’s history. This was before the cable television explosion that would turn wrestling into a mainstream entertainment product. In the early and mid-1970s, wrestling was building toward its national moment, and the promotional machinery behind it needed people who understood media, public image, and how to handle journalists.
Jean handled all of that. She was one of very few women working at that level inside wrestling at the time. She coordinated press coverage for events, managed wrestlers’ public appearances, and served as a buffer between the talent and the media in an era when kayfabe, the practice of maintaining the fictional realities of wrestling as if they were real, was still taken seriously by promoters.
Working in that environment required specific skills: discretion, organization, composure under pressure, and the ability to manage unpredictable personalities. Jean had all of them. Her WWF career gave her access to the full machinery of what would eventually become the largest wrestling organization on the planet.
Meeting André
André René Roussimoff was born on May 19, 1946, in Coulommiers, France, to Bulgarian and Polish immigrant parents. His gigantism was visible from childhood. By age 12 he stood 6 feet 3 inches. He left school at 14, worked on farms, and found professional wrestling through a Paris promoter who recognized the commercial potential of his size.
By 1971 André had relocated to North America. By 1974, the year Jean met him, he was already one of the most recognizable attractions in professional wrestling. WWF promoter Vincent J. McMahon booked him as a roving special attraction traveling across different territories, the man no local champion could beat, the spectacle that drove ticket sales wherever he appeared.
Jean later described meeting André on a television interview. There was no romantic spark at first, she said. He was genuinely surprised when she did something kind for him without asking for anything in return. That detail matters. André’s size made people stare, point, and demand things from him constantly. His entire adult life was defined by being treated as a spectacle. Someone who interacted with him as a person, not a phenomenon, stood out.
Their relationship developed over time. Jean later said she had believed André was unable to have children. She was wrong.
The Paternity Battle and Robin
In 1979, Jean gave birth to a daughter in France. Robin Christensen-Roussimoff was the result of her relationship with André. Robin was born while Jean was living in France, and she raised Robin primarily in the United States after returning.
André did not immediately accept that Robin was his child. Jean had to fight for recognition and financial support. A 1981 court-ordered blood test confirmed the biological relationship. That legal process, a mother fighting to establish paternity for her daughter against one of the most famous athletes in the world, is a story that gets reduced to a footnote in every article about André’s legacy.
Jean won. The court confirmed what she already knew.
André’s wrestling schedule made any consistent father-daughter relationship nearly impossible. He was on the road constantly, moving between promotions in the US, Japan, and elsewhere. Robin has said she met her father only about five times in her life. According to the book “The Eighth Wonder of the World” by Bertrand Hebert and Pat Laprade, André’s attempts to call Robin were complicated by his tense relationship with Jean. Arguments between the two adults made phone calls difficult. Neither Jean nor André wanted Robin spending too much time around the wrestling business.
André cared deeply about his daughter despite his inability to be present. Before his death in 1993, he arranged his estate so that Robin would inherit two-thirds of his assets, held in trust until she turned 30 in 2009. He was specifically concerned that Jean might control the money, which speaks to how complicated the relationship remained until the end.
André’s Career Peak and Jean’s Background Role
While Jean stepped back from the public-facing aspects of wrestling after Robin’s birth, André’s career moved into its most globally visible phase.
He headlined WrestleMania III in 1987 against Hulk Hogan in the Pontiac Silverdome before an announced crowd of 93,173 people. He won the WWF Heavyweight Championship in 1988 on the first episode of The Main Event. These were the culminating professional moments of a career built on his physical presence and the mental discipline required to perform through chronic pain that would have stopped most people entirely.
Jean observed all of this from a distance. She had known André before any of those moments. She had dealt with the personal dimensions of his life that the crowd at the Silverdome knew nothing about.
The Princess Bride and What Robin Remembers
In 1987, André appeared as Fezzik in The Princess Bride, the film that cemented his cultural presence beyond wrestling. For Robin, growing up largely without her father, this film became one of the few touchstones she had to him.
She has said in interviews that The Princess Bride was her favorite memory of André. A fictional giant in a fairy tale movie was, for his own daughter, more accessible than the real man who was constantly somewhere else in the world.
Jean raised Robin in that context. The legal battles, the physical distance, the awkward phone calls that ended in arguments between the adults. She built her daughter’s life around stability while André’s legend grew through television, films, and two decades of professional wrestling that produced one of the most devoted fanbases in sports entertainment.
André’s Death and Jean’s Final Years
André the Giant died on January 28, 1993, in Paris. He was 46 years old. The cause was heart failure, directly linked to the acromegaly that had defined and eventually destroyed his body. He had gone to France for his father Boris’s funeral and died in his sleep at his hotel.
He became the inaugural inductee into the WWF Hall of Fame posthumously in 1993.
Jean did not give public interviews after André’s death. She stepped entirely away from the wrestling world. She raised Robin in Washington state. Robin later appeared in the 2018 HBO documentary about André’s life, offering the only public window into what the relationship between her parents had actually looked like.
Jean Christensen died on September 2, 2008, at her residence in Snohomish County, Washington. She was 59 years old. The cause of her death was not publicly disclosed, consistent with how she had conducted her entire life.
She is survived by Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, who received two-thirds of André’s estate when the trust expired in 2009, and who continues to appear at conventions and events to honor her father’s memory.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Jean Christensen (birth surname Gantriis) |
| Born | August 15, 1949, Minnesota, USA |
| Heritage | Danish-American |
| Career | Model, then WWF public relations professional |
| Partner | André René Roussimoff (André the Giant), never legally married |
| Daughter | Robin Christensen-Roussimoff (born 1979) |
| Paternity confirmed | 1981 court-ordered blood test |
| Died | September 2, 2008, Snohomish County, Washington, age 59 |
| André’s death | January 28, 1993, Paris, age 46 |
| André’s estate | Two-thirds to Robin, held in trust until 2009 |
