1988: Southern belle Dixie Cooney did not grow up in a happy home. Though she loved her late mother, Bess Cooney Hunkle, her father, Seabone Hunkle, was never there for her. They rarely had enough to eat. When she was but a child, her sister, Della Cooney, was sent away to live with a rich aunt in Europe so as to save her from their impoverished life in Pigeon’s Hallow.
After her mother’s death, Dixie and her brother Will made her way to Pine Valley in search of her rich uncle, Pete Cooney. Dixie got a job as a maid at Cortlandt Manor while Will became the Manor’s stable hand. A chance encounter with a woman from their past would change the direction of their lives forever.
Dixie could not believe whom she saw seated, playing piano in the Cortlandt Parlor. It was her sister, Della. Della, now going by Melanie Cortlandt, revealed Palmer was their uncle. Palmer embraced his nieces and nephews and promised they would never work as servants again.
But Dixie was determined to support herself. She took a job as Laura Cudahy’s nanny at the Chandler Mansion. Dixie knew Palmer would disapprove of her working for his greatest rival, Pigeon's Hallow native Adam Chandler.

1989: Dixie was taken by Adam’s kindness. She knew Adam and wife Brooke English had longed to have a child since Laura’s untimely death. Unfortunately, Brooke could not have any more children. Adam and Dixie fell into an affair. When Dixie learned she was pregnant, Adam begged her to keep it a secret from Brooke. Dixie agreed that she would allow the Chandlers to adopt her child when it was born.
But as time went by, Dixie realized she had fallen in love with the unborn boy.
Tad Martin especially took a like to Dixie. He was relentless in his need to determine who the father of Dixie’s child was. Soon, all of that did not matter. He had fallen in love.
After Dixie gave birth to her son, Adam “Junior” Chandler, jr., she could not bear to give the child away. She gave Adam an ultimatum: it was either her and the baby or Brooke. Adam could not bear to loose another child, and chose Dixie. His marriage to Brooke was over. Soon, Dixie was the newest Mrs. Adam Chandler.
Dixie wanted to put her romance with Tad behind her, but he would not let her. Tad was sure Adam was up to no good. Dixie began to experience odd bouts of memory loss. She was afraid her loss of functioning would affect her ability to care for Junior. Adam convinced Dixie it was best for her to go to Laurel Hill to recover. In fact, Adam was making it seem as if she was an unfit mother so as to win full custody of Junior.
Adam would have succeeded if Tad did not catch on to his plan. He convinced Dixie that she was not crazy. With the help of Cecily Davidson and Nico Kelly, they went on the run until they could incriminate Adam. Still, there was a tough custody battle before them. Dixie knew she could make it through as long as Tad was by her side.
One night, Tad planned a special dinner at Cortlandt Manor. That night, he surprised Dixie in a chicken suit and proposed marriage. Palmer threw them a lavish wedding.

1990: Dixie panicked when Junior was kidnapped. Skye Chandler was the prime suspect. But, Tad was able to uncover the real culprit, Karen Parker.
Tad accused Dixie of allowing Palmer to intervene in their marriage. Dixie did not agree with Tad’s implications. He was only going to be happy if they left Pine Valley together. Dixie was not ready for such a change. She confided her reservations in her new friend, John Rockefeller. Rockefeller was none other than Billy Clyde Tuggle, one of Pine Valley’s most dastardly evil residents. Billy Clyde grew obsessed with Dixie, and fueled her insecurities over Tad.
Palmer hired Lorretta Rutherford to claim that she and Tad had an affair. This coupled with Billy Clyde’s influence, caused Dixie to file for divorce.
Dixie remained friends with Billy Clyde long after his identity was revealed. When she rejected his advances one too many times, he revealed his true colors. He held Dixie prisoner in a cabin, intent on making her his wife. Trevor Dillon and Derek Frye rescued her. She realized how much she had loved Tad. They reconciled and planned to remarry that Christmas.
But fate had other plans. Billy Clyde had escaped the police barricades. He lured Tad to a bridge on the day he was to marry Dixie. A bomb went off, and both fell into the icy water below. Both her greatest enemy and greatest love were dead.

1991: Dixie pushed everyone away in her grief. Only one person was able to break her shell. Craig Lawson came to Pine Valley in search of Dixie. He claimed to be a friend of Tad’s from his time in California. They shared their memories of Dixie’s late husband. Dixie wanted Craig to stay in Pine Valley, so she arranged for Craig to get a job at Cortlandt Electronics.
Will was weary of Craig and his intentions for Dixie. Dixie and Will were estranged when Will’s plot to sabotage Craig at Cortlandt Electronics was revealed. Will claimed Craig was a con man only after Dixie’s money. Dixie rejected her brother and turned to Craig. They married in a small ceremony at Cortlandt Manor.
Brooke revealed she was pregnant with Tad’s child. Instead of lashing out at Brooke, Dixie forged a friendship. She would become the godmother of her and Tad’s child, Jamie Martin.

1992: Dixie and Will’s estrangement took its toll on her. Before they could make amends, Will was found bludgeoned to death by a crow bar in his apartment. Through the murder investigation, a long list of suspects was accumulated, including Craig. Craig’s deceptions came to light. He never knew Tad. He also had an affair with Dixie’s supposed new friend, Gloria Marsh. Gloria turned out to be Craig’s ex-fiancé. Dixie sent Craig packing.

1993: Junior brought home one of his friends, Brian Bodine. Brian had become like a big brother to Junior. Dixie and Brian struck up a friendship. Dixie really needed a friend. Her divorce from Craig, and Tad and Will’s death, all left Dixie in a fragile mental state. She sunk into a deep depression. Adam recognized this as the perfect opportunity to sue full custody of Junior. Brian reached out Dixie in her time of need. He married her hoping that their marriage would help her keep Junior.
A miracle turned Dixie’s depression around. Tad was found alive and in Pine Valley. Brooke had helped him recover from his amnesia. Dixie and Tad shared a romantic reunion in Napa Valley, where Tad now owned Orsini Vineyards. But their one night together could not heal the wounds of the last three years. Dixie had been married two times, and Tad had fathered a child with Brooke. Tad married Brooke to offer Jamie a stable life.
After divorcing Brian, Dixie began dating Ted Orsini, the man whose life Tad took over in Napa. Ted had secret vendetta against Tad. He invited Tad on a hunting trip in Canada. Dixie realized Ted intended on killing Tad. She went to rescue Tad. They successfully eluded Ted’s grasp. Unable to deny their attraction to each other, Tad and Dixie fell into an affair.

1994: After Brooke miscarried, she agreed to a divorce. Tad and Dixie were free to marry. This time, Palmer opened his home to the couple. They married in a lavish garden wedding.
At the wedding, Dixie met a surprise guest. Del Henry had been lurking around Pine Valley in search of Dixie. He had a long kept secret for her. Dixie knew Seabone had been unfaithful to her mother. She did not know, that he had fathered another family in nearby Crow's Hallow. Del was one of those children that he fathered, and abandoned. Now, he was kidney failure. He needed Dixie’s help to save his life. Tad worried about Dixie’s decision because a kidney transplant would compromise any chances for them to having a child together.
Before Dixie could make her decision, a tornado crashed through Pine Valley. The Martin home was destroyed with Tad inside. Dixie watched helplessly as Tad hovered near death. Luckily, Tad would recover from his injuries.

1995: Dixie teamed up with Trevor to drive Janet out of town. Janet began gas lighting Dixie by hiring an actor named James to impersonate Will. Dixie was almost driven mad by her visions. This created tension in her marriage as Tad had hired Janet at Orsini before knowing who she was.
Dixie decided to go through with the kidney transplant. Del made a quick recovery, but Dixie was not as lucky. Because of complications from the surgery, the doctors told her she should not have any children.
Dixie made the decision to go back to school to become a teacher. There, she met teacher Michael Delaney. Tad worried that Michael had a romantic interest in his wife. But, Dixie knew better. Michael had confided in Dixie that he was gay.

1996: Dixie was devastated by Laurel Dillon’s death on the set of The Cutting Edge. She blamed Tad for reducing the show into tabloid journalism, using Michael’s pending discrimination lawsuit to increase ratings. She kicked Tad out of the house.
Tad and Dixie tried to make their marriage work. One day, Marian Colby played a tape for Dixie. On it, was Tad’s confession that he had slept with Liza the night Dixie threw him out. Dixie confronted her husband. When Tad could not promise to hurt Dixie again, Dixie made the decision to leave him.
Needing a clean start, Dixie packed up Junior and moved back to Pigeon’s Hallow to become a schoolteacher. Her only contact to Pine Valley was through Gloria.

1998: Dixie had created a new life for herself in Pigeon's Hallow. She was a schoolteacher and engaged to a man named Jonah. But Dixie could not escape the drama on Pine Valley.
Adam sued for temporary custody of Junior, now going by JR, after a madman named Lee Hawkins threatened to harm the members of the Chandler family. Dixie refused to let JR move into Chandler Mansion alone, so she accompanied him to Pine Valley, hoping to keep her distance from Tad.
Lee’s daughter Camille Hawkins warned all the Chandlers about Lee’s plot to kill them all in an explosion at Hayley Vaughan’s restaurant Holidays. After the explosion, Dixie went to the scene only to find Tad mourning Camille’s death.
It was like no time had passed between Tad and Dixie. They went on a mission to find Palmer who was on the run with Nazi artifacts. In New York, they decided they needed to come to terms with their relationship. If they wanted to be together again, they would meet at the top of the Empire State Building at midnight. After lamenting the pros and cons, Dixie realized she was still in love with Tad. But before she could get to Tad, she suffered kidney failure and was admitted to the hospital.
Palmer rescued Dixie. In the hospital, Dixie was diagnosed with a heart condition as a result of her kidney failure. Palmer did his best to keep Dixie from contacting Tad. Palmer put Braden Lavery in charge of guarding Dixie. After telling him about her love for Tad, Braden let Dixie use his cell phone to call Tad. But Dixie could not bring herself to tell Tad what happened. She let him go on thinking that she no longer wanted to be with him.

1999: Dixie asked Braden to help her tape a living will for JR. On the tape, she confessed her illness to her son. She gave the tape to Adam in trust, but he accidentally let JR see it. JR ran away to Tad’s house. She was able to retrieve JR before he told the truth to Tad. It was Liza who would discover the tape and tell Tad what happened in New York. Dixie admitted that she wanted to see Tad in New York, but her condition had sent her to the hospital. Tad and Dixie married for a third time. Unfortunetly, this time Palmer stayed away from the ceremony.
Braden turned out to not be what he seemed. He had raped Kit Montgomery and almost let his brother, Ryan Lavery, took the fall. In a heated confrontation, Braden tried to attack Dixie. Ryan intervened and saved her.
Dixie and Tad remarried. Adam was weary of Tad’s relationship with JR. He wanted to send his son away to boarding school, but Dixie would hear nothing of it.

2000: Dixie got a job as the executive assistant to the Andrassy Foundation. Dixie stumbled across Dr. David Hayward treating Dimitri Marick, who was thought dead by the rest of Pine Valley. Dixie encouraged Dimitri to reveal himself to his family, but he was afraid that he was still dying. One night, Dixie told Dr. Alex Marick, Dimitri’s wife, where he was and they had a bittersweet reunion.
Dixie and Tad’s marriage was a shaky ground since he teamed up with Liza at Chandler Industries. Dixie was turned off by Tad’s need for revenge against Adam, especially after seeing how the battle was affecting JR. Dixie spent more time at work, and with David. One night, they shared a kiss. Dixie told David it meant nothing, but he was not convinced. Dixie decided to leave the Andrassy Foundation.

2001: When Dixie learned that Tad had slept with Leslie Coulson, Dixie ran to David and slept with him. She did not want to hear Tad’s explanations for his infidelity. Tad made it his mission to prove that he had been drugged. Leslie became unhinged in her obsession for Tad. She began to stalk Dixie. One night, she kidnapped her and took her to the roof of the Chandler Industries building. She wanted Dixie to commit suicide and threatened to hurt JR if she did not. David saved Dixie before Leslie could complete her plot.
Tad was sure that David was behind his drugging and Leslie’s involvement in their lives. Dixie was still not convinced. They put their difference aside to help JR who had begun to take drugs. They learned JR was a victim on the Proteus drug ring that had made its way to Pine Valley. When JR’s provider Sweeney was found dead, Tad became one of the prime suspects. Tad took the fall to protect JR, who he thought was the real killer.
The breaking point in their marriage came when Tad signed Leslie’s release letter from Oak Haven to finally implicate David. Leslie had been working with David to break up the couple. David admitted to drugging Tad and the other guests on Fidelity with Libidizone the night Leslie slept with Tad.
But Leslie broke free and tried to kill Dixie again. Dixie still left Tad because he put his hate for David ahead of her safety.

2002: Dixie surprised Tad by asking for a quick divorce. They shared one last romantic evening in the Caribbean. Then Dixie abruptly announced she was leaving Pine Valley to teach a seminar in Switzerland. Dixie’s strange decisions were motivated by some good news she received: she was pregnant with Tad’s daughter. Afraid that Tad would ask her to abort the pregnancy, Dixie enlisted David’s help to find a clinic to help her deal with her high-risk pregnancy. Before leaving JR, she gave him her star necklace, the symbol of her undying love for Tad.
Lanie helped Dixie at the clinic. When she reached her third trimester, Dixie finally told Tad about the baby, their baby: Kate Martin. But their happiness was not to be as Dixie’s car swerved off the roads in the Alps. Dixie was presumed dead.

2005: Di Henry made her way to Europe on Christmas Eve after her public humiliation at Chandler Mansion. Di witnessed first hand as Tad, Jamie, and JR’s family imploded. She knew only one person could bring them together: Dixie.
Dixie had been living in Europe since her supposed death in Switzerland. Di begged Dixie to come home, but she was not ready. Di left her with a recent picture of her family: Tad, Jamie, JR and her new grandson, Adam Chandler, III. Dixie knew coming home meant answering questions she did have the answers to.

2006: Dixie decided to slip back to Pine Valley to observe her family. She was trapped in the Mardi Gras Ball explosion and worried she would be discovered. She learned Di had spent the last year impersonating her. She confronted Di about what she had done. Just when she was about to leave Pine Valley, she saw Dr. Greg Madden. Greg was the key to finding her missing daughter, Kate.
Dixie’s first ally was Zach Slater. Zach found Dixie after she was accidentally shot by JR. Zach promised to help her look for Kate. Greg had done his own deal of harm against his pregnant wife, Kendall Hart Slater. When David discovered Dixie alive, she agreed to help her out in secret. He wanted to reconcile with Dixie and knew that would not be possible if Tad knew she was alive.
Tad discovered Dixie at David’s cabin. Dixie was forced to explain her reasoning for staying away. Greg told her she was going to die after her accident in Switzerland. Afraid that Tad would not want their child knowing her birth would be responsible for her death, Dixie signed Kate away to Greg. But Dixie made a full recovery, she thought she could not come home without Kate. Tad lashed out at Dixie for thinking he did not love Kate. He made it clear that they would look for Kate together, but she would be living with him when she was found.
Greg was found buried alive in the Pine Valley park. Dixie and Zach became the prime suspects. Tad testified against Dixie in open court. He berated her for being a liar and a cheat in front of her children. The judge called a mistrial after his story was discredited with video evidence. At the end of the trial, Tad revealed it was all his plot to get Dixie off and throw the investigation. He was in fact Greg’s real killer.
David told Dixie he had found Kate. She was being raised by Annie McDermott. The facts seemed to check out because Annie was one of Greg’s patients. Distraught, Dixie kidnapped Emma McDermott believing she was KAte. It all turned out to be a ruse. David was jealous that Dixie had turned back to Tad. Before leaving town, he told Dixie that Krystal Chandler was pregnant with Tad’s daughter, not Adam’s.
As estranged as she was with Tad, Dixie was further estranged from her children. She moved into Chandler mansion to be closer to JR.

2007: Dixie found herself at odds with Krystal , Adam’s new wife. Dixie wanted Tad to finally have a little girl and struggled to keep Krystal's baby’s paternity a secret.
Dixie was finally putting a semblance of her old life together. She asked Joe if she could have her old job back at Pine Valley Hospital. Tad and Dixie finally put aside their animosity in their search for Kate. Tad even asked her out on a date.
But their happiness was not to be. Dixie ate poisoned pancakes that were intended for Babe Chandler, JR's wife. She was rushed to the hospital, but there was nothing the doctors could do. Dixie died in Tad’s arms. In her last words to JR, she revealed that Krystal’s baby was Tad’s and not Adam’s.
As her spirit left Pine Valley she passed Kathy Mershon, Julia Keefer’s adopted daughter, and realized she was Kate.

2008: Dixie’s spirit began to haunt Adam. Adam had learned the truth about Kathy, but decided to keep the truth from Tad because of his relationship with Krystal. Adam was driven mad by his visions, even ending up at Oak Haven Sanitarium.
Dixie knew something bad was going to happen. She next appeared to Jake and told him he needed to stay in Pine Valley for Tad. Her ominous warnings came to light at the Hubbard wedding where Robert Gardner shot Tad.
Tad was in a coma on the brink of death. Dixie and Tad reunited as he lay near death. In a dream like state, they lived out their lives together as if they never lost Kate. Tad wanted to stay with Dixie, but she told him he needed to live for Kate. Adam arrived at the hospital with proof about Kathy’s identity. Adam’s words pulled Tad out of his coma, and out of Dixie’s arms.
Dixie and Tad shared one last kiss under the stars.