Gayle King has shut down the speculation that she and her friend Oprah Winfrey are a lesbian couple. The longtime CBS Mornings anchor said during a podcast episode, “If we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man.”
Gayle King had strife with BFF Oprah when she refused to shut down rumors they were together
In an episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper on May 27, the 71-year-old TV personality recalled how she handled the rumors. She said, “It used to really bother me. I was recently divorced, and The National Enquirer did a story about it, that’s the reason for the divorce because they’re secretly gay.”
King was married to William Bumpus, a former Connecticut Assistant Attorney General, who had cheated on her with her close friend. She eventually ended that marriage in 1993.
King said she repeatedly urged Winfrey to address and dismiss the rumors on her talk show. “I would say to her, ‘You’ve got to say something on your show because it’s hard enough for me to get a date on a Saturday night, and now people think I’m a lesbian, you’ve gotta say something. And she said, ‘No, we should just leave it be.’”
“I said, ‘Well, that’s fine for you to say. You have somebody. I don’t,'” King remembered telling Winfrey, who has been with Stedman Graham since 1986. “So it used to really bother me. And now, even today, there are still people who say, ‘Well, you know, the truth is…’ I don’t care. I’ve now gotten to the point in my life that very few things get to me,” the former anchor expressed.
Winfrey and King’s friendship began in 1976. They both were employed at Baltimore’s WJZ station. Winfrey was an anchor for the 6 o’clock news, while King was a production assistant, as per Oprah Daily. In a conversation with Newsweek in 2024, King said, “I never get sick of being asked about Oprah because I so love that she is loved the way she is. I so love that she is embraced the way she is. And it only makes me proud.”
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