Gayle King’s Ex-Husband Just Publicly Apologized — After She Described Walking In on Him

William Bumpus has said publicly what he apparently hasn’t said enough in private: he’s sorry.

The statement came Wednesday, hours after Gayle King described the end of their marriage on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. In the episode, King, 71, told the story of returning home early from a trip — her flight had been canceled — and finding Bumpus in their Connecticut home with one of her close married friends. The alarm was set, which struck her as unusual. Her husband came out of the bedroom in a towel and told her she couldn’t come in. Then she found the other woman.

“I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this. I can’t believe that you are doing this,” King said she told the woman. “And I even said, ‘I thought we were friends!’ It sounded so pitiful.”

The detail that landed: when King came through the door, her children were with her. She had their nanny take them while she dealt with what she was seeing.

What Bumpus Said

Bumpus sent a statement to Page Six Wednesday in response. The statement was extensive.

“My deepest apologies to Gayle, to our daughter Kirby and her husband, Virgil, to our son William and his wife, Elise, and to our three grandchildren, for the pain I caused decades ago,” Bumpus wrote. “Those actions were mine.”

He acknowledged that King “has every right to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly forty years ago,” adding: “I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it.”

Then, notably, he went further. “I remain endlessly grateful to Gayle. She gave me two of the greatest gifts of my life — our daughter Kirby and our son William. It was Gayle who encouraged and supported me through getting my Yale Law degree. And it was Gayle who chose, with me, to co-parent successfully from the very beginning — a testament to our shared commitment to our children above all else, and now our grandchildren. The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years.”

What Oprah Said

On the podcast, King described calling Winfrey immediately after discovering the affair. The two stayed on the phone for about two hours. Winfrey was the only person King told — she didn’t tell her mother, didn’t tell her three sisters, nothing.

“I called Oprah. Oprah goes, ‘Wait, let me get this straight. He left you there alone and went with her?’” King recalled. “She said, ‘Oh, girl, you don’t even know how bad this is.’”

King said she eventually considered reconciling with Bumpus. Winfrey had a clear view on that: “No, he ain’t changed.” When King kept resisting, Winfrey’s patience ran out. “She got so sick of hearing it,” King said. “She goes, ‘Please go back with him. Please. I will drive the moving van. Please!’ That’s when you realize you’re telling people too much.”

King and Bumpus divorced in 1993. She told Cooper she has never remarried, and knows what she’s looking for: “You want somebody who lifts you up. You want somebody who’s proud of you. You want somebody who thinks, ‘God, I think it’s great being with you.’ I’m looking for him.”