Fabio's 1993 PEOPLE Cover Helped His 'Conservative' Dad Understand Him and Say, 'I'm So Proud of You' (Exclusive)

It was the summer of 1987 when Fabio Lanzoni became simply Fabio. Then a successful model — he worked for brands like Gap and Versace — he was dancing in a Miami club when he remembers being recognized in public for the first time.

"These three girls come over and say, 'You look exactly like the guy on our books!'" Fabio remembers.

Fabio had posed for a few photographs that were going to become book covers, but he hadn't yet seen any of them. The women left and returned with novels in hand.

"I go like, 'Oh my God, that's me,'" he tells PEOPLE. "It was the first time I saw myself on the cover of the books."

He had arrived. But, now 65, with the benefit of hindsight, Fabio says he really arrived in 1993 — when he appeared on the cover of PEOPLE. The shoot was in Hawaii, he remembers. "I loved that shoot, I was treated like a king! It's one of my best memories of that time in my life."

No one owned the '90s quite like the Italian-born model turned romance novel cover star. He posed for 1,300 of them, hair always blowing, muscles always glistening. His name was also on a dizzying array of stuff: hair-care products, fitness videos, posters, a clothing line at Sam's Club. He became further immortalized in movies like Dude, Where's My Car?, Spy Hard and Death Becomes Her and on shows including Step by Step and Guiding Light, often playing himself. And, of course, there were those I Can't Believe It's Not Butter ads.

For Fabio, the PEOPLE cover "was everything." But it wasn't as much about the validation of fame as the approval from his father, a mechanical engineer who did not approve of his son's modeling career.

"My father was a very conservative man. He called me a mannequin, 'You don't want to be a mannequin,' he would say. For him, the entire modeling industry was not for men."

He wanted Fabio to join his field. "I was like, 'Dad, it's great, but that's what you love.'"

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His father, Fabio says, did not speak to him for years after he left Italy. "He got really hurt I did not want to follow in his footsteps." But in 1993, Fabio got the cover of PEOPLE.

"For the first time in my life, my father said to me, 'Fabio, I'm wrong.' My father was never wrong, so I couldn't believe when he said, 'You really made it, I'm very proud of you. I was wrong and you were right.' He said, 'I'm so proud of you. You made it.' That was to me, it was the best reward."

On the set of his PEOPLE cover recreation, Fabio — who does look remarkably the same three decades later — reveals he still works out six to seven days a week and still has never smoked or consumed alcohol. And yes, he still avoids sugar. (And yes, he's currently single.) But one question lingers: Did you still have the black tank top you wore on the 1993 cover?

"No," he says with a laugh. "We had to get a new one."