In the 1970s, Patrick Labyorteaux was a young teen actor best known for his role as Andy Garvey on Little House on the Prairie. Labyorteaux appeared on the NBC drama series from 1977 to 1981 alongside his brother, Matthew (Albert Ingalls on the series).
At the height of the show’s popularity, the actor brothers frequently appeared in teen magazines, a fun fact that Labyorteaux, now 60, recently shared on his YouTube show, The Patrick LabyorSheaux.
“I was a teen idol, which I can’t believe it when I say it, but yeah, I was a teen idol,” Labyorteaux told fans in an April 2026 upload. “I was in the magazines. I was in 16 magazine, Tiger Beat. My brother and I were both in them, and I was just the perfect age to be in them. We were on Little House on the Prairie, and they put us in the magazines, and I swear to you, I absolutely loved it.”
“I mean, come on, what’s better than being a teen idol?” he added. “You get all of these pictures of you in magazines. All these girls are going crazy for you, and it’s just it was awesome.“
The actor noted that the fandom he received from Little House fans wasn’t Beatles-level hysteria. “We got a lot of mail, and every now and again when we would go out, it would be people would recognize us, but it wasn’t like we were chased down,” he clarified. “No one was storming our house to break in, you know. And again, these are Little House fans, so they’d what? They’d storm in, break into the house, and offer to churn your butter? This was not like a dangerous fandom.”
He shared that during his time as a teen idol, he and his brother would go to fan events with fellow popular young stars such as Glenn Scarpelli (One Day at a Time) and Danielle Brisebois (All in the Family) and have a “blast.”
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While he didn’t name anyone directly, Labyorteaux revealed that he took issue with fellow teen idols who downplayed their past.
“The thing I hate is when a person will go, ‘Oh, I was a teen idol. That was so stupid.’ It’s like, ‘Dude, it was not. You totally loved it,’” the actor said. “They’re trying to act cool, and it just, it comes off fake. It comes off I mean, it’s a great thing. …Do not believe those fakers who say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that great.’ Yeah, it was. It was awesome.”
Labyorteaux’s brother was less tuned in to the teen idol fandom
The Labyorteaux brothers were often featured posing together in teen magazine spreads. But while Patrick loved the adulation and purposely posed the way he thought his teen fans wanted to see him, his brother was less in tune with the situation.
In a 2021 interview with Page Six, Matthew Labyorteaux admitted that the teen idol adulation was “lost” on him.
“I mean, you’d walk into a restaurant and people turn and whisper, ask for an autograph or whatever,” he recalled. “Other than that, I didn’t feel like I was the peacock walking down the street, to be honest.”
“I think some people just loved to sort of roll around in that and just enjoy the accolades and the girls chasing after you,” the Little House on the Prairie actor added. “I was a shy, shy kid. I had my animals. I really didn’t know that I was popular.”
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