Dean Butler knows his role on Little House on the Prairie had an impact on far more people than just himself.
The 69-year-old actor frequently meets fans during events, and many of them usually tell him the same thing, he tells PEOPLE.
"A woman would come up to the table with her husband, with her children, with significant others, and tell me, 'You are my first crush in the world.' That is one of the sweetest things," he says. "It's totally benign the way they say it. It's this beautiful thing."
Butler says the show's lasting impact is prevalent whenever he gets a chance to talk to fans of the beloved series, which ran from 1974 to 1983.
"You get laughter from that. You get tears that come off of that. People talk about the things that were going on in their lives as they're watching the program. People get different things from different characters," he shares.
Butler joined Little House on the Prairie in season 6 as Almanzo Wilder, who later married Melissa Gilbert's character, Laura Ingalls. Almanzo, who also went by the nickname "Manly," attracted the attention of other characters in the show's Walnut Grove.
Butler didn't know at the time, but he also caught the attention of many female fans.
"We travel, we meet people, and we get to see in the eyes of people who love this, we get to see the joy that they have when they are... when they get to come together with people that they've been watching their whole lives," he says. "We watch their reflection; we watch these moments play in their heads. We get tears; we get laughter; we get funny. We get just wonderful honesty from people."
"Women of all ages walk up to me. I get this from women in their 60s, and I get it from teenage girls still, which is incredibly flattering in a spectrum of the world that we live in," Butler adds.
"What they're watching is me frozen when they're watching the show. They're watching all of us frozen in time 40 years ago. We're never gonna change," he continues. "We change around those pictures, but the pictures don't change. They are responding to what they see in those pictures."
He notes that, before he goes off to Little House on the Prairie events, his wife of over 20 years, Katherine Cannon, prepares him for the oncoming adoration.
"My wife always says to me when I go off on these weekends, she says, 'Okay, go off and be adored again this weekend,'" Butler jokes.
Butler continues to engage with the fans of the show through various events. Most recently, he reconnected with his former co-stars for the new documentary, Little House Homecoming, which features original cast members Karen Grassle, Alison Arngrim, Charlotte Stewart and Wendi Lou Lee. The show follows the cast as they travel to the real-life places that inspired the original books and reconnect with the spirit of Little House.
The film takes viewers on a journey across "Laura-land" alongside the cast, highlighting the places Laura Wilder Ingalls called home. The Big Woods, the Banks of Plum Creek, the Little Town on the Prairie and Ingall's final home in Missouri are all featured in the film.
Museum directors and researchers dedicated to maintaining the real-life woman's legacy also share firsthand encounters of her impact on the Little House community.