• Gayle King appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast and described the moment she caught ex-husband William Bumpus cheating on her with a close friend — she returned home early from a trip to find her friend “cowering behind the door in my towel”
• Bumpus, who was married to King from 1982 to 1993, responded to Page Six with a statement acknowledging “the pain I caused decades ago” and extending apologies to King, their two children, their children’s spouses, and their three grandchildren
• He also credited King for supporting him through Yale Law School and for their successful co-parenting: “The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years”
• King has described calling Oprah Winfrey immediately after discovering the affair — Winfrey stayed on the phone with her for two hours, eventually telling her flatly: “No, he ain’t changed”

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.”

The post Gayle King’s Ex-Husband Just Publicly Apologized — After She Described Walking In on Him appeared first on Cream.

• Gayle King, 71, appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper on May 27 and addressed the decades-old rumors that she and Oprah Winfrey are secretly in a lesbian relationship
• King said the speculation “used to really bother” her — especially after the National Enquirer ran a story claiming it was the reason her marriage ended
• Her response: “If we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man.”
• King wanted Oprah to publicly shut the rumors down; Oprah told her to “leave it alone” — a rare point of tension in their 50-year friendship
• King also revealed how Oprah supported her through her divorce after discovering her husband William Bumpus had cheated on her

Gayle King has addressed the Oprah rumors before. But on Wednesday’s episode of Call Her Daddy, she went further than usual — including the part where she and Oprah actually disagreed about what to do.

Sitting down with host Alex Cooper, King, 71, was asked directly how it felt to have spent decades fielding speculation that she and Oprah Winfrey, her best friend of over 50 years, are secretly in a romantic relationship. Her answer was candid and a little funny and a little pointed all at once.

“It used to really bother me,” King said. “I was recently divorced, and there was — the National Enquirer did a story about ‘that’s the reason for the divorce, because they’re secretly gay.'”

She set the record straight with characteristic directness: “Number one, if we were gay, we would tell you because, believe me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just, I prefer a man. I prefer a man.”

The Disagreement They Don’t Talk About Much

The more revealing part of the conversation was what King said about her and Oprah’s different approaches to handling the rumors. King wanted Oprah to address them publicly. Oprah refused.

“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,'” King recalled. But Oprah’s answer was firm: leave it alone.

That was a real moment of friction in a friendship that is famously tight. King’s frustration was legitimate — she was the one navigating a public divorce while the tabloids ran stories about her sexuality. Oprah’s calculation, apparently, was that responding only adds fuel. They each had a point. Oprah won.

Bossip noted that King admitted she never saw herself in Oprah’s shadow during all of this. “I always say I see myself in her light,” King said. “And I do mean that. I have never, not once thought, ‘God, I wish I could be her.'” She went on to describe how different they actually are at their core: “I love people, I love lights, camera, action. And Oprah’s very fine sitting at home with a book.”

The Divorce, and What Oprah Said

King also opened up on the podcast about the end of her marriage to William Bumpus, and how Oprah helped her through it. The TODAY segment on the interview highlighted the eight words Oprah told her after she discovered Bumpus had been unfaithful — King’s account of Oprah’s support in that moment was one of the more personal things she shared in the episode.

It’s the kind of friendship that makes sense when you hear her describe it. Not frictionless, not without the occasional disagreement over how to handle a tabloid story. But 50 years deep and apparently still the thing she leans on when everything else gets hard.

The Call Her Daddy episode is out now.

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