For more than 30 years, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King have shared a special and intimate bond — and it’s all platonic.
The pair of television personalities and longtime friends have revisited the topic of their rumored romantic relationship, more than a decade after they first set things straight. In conversation with Melinda French Gates for her “Moments That Make Us” series, King bluntly put speculation to rest: “If we were gay we would tell you!”
Winfrey, 70, and King, 69, met in the late ’70s as colleagues working at a Baltimore-area news station and have seemingly been inseparable since. For decades, the duo have shared screen time, attended red carpet events together and embarked on numerous girls’ trips, often fueling rumors that they were more than just friends.
In the early aughts, both Winfrey and King publicly shot down that chatter. In 2007, King told “Good Morning America” that she was surprised the rumors would “be this big” and explained that the speculation “bothers me.”
“If we were, we would so tell you,” she said at the time. “We don’t think there is anything wrong with it. That’s what’s so frustrating about it.”
Similarly, Winfrey confirmed to late “20/20” journalist Barbara Walters in 2010, “I am not a lesbian.”
“The reason why [the rumor] irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying,” Winfrey said at the time. “That’s No. 1. No. 2 … why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”
Parts of the TV stars’ previous responses were echoed during their sit-down interview with Gates. Winfrey said that she didn’t think people are “accustomed to seeing women with this kind of truth bond” and that her friendship with King has stood the test of time because the CBS News journalist is always “happier for me for any kind of success or victory or challenge I get through, than I am for myself.”
The duo also told Gates about how their friendship has positively affected their professional and personal lives. Winfrey pointed out that King would be living a different life if she had not divorced William Bumpus — with whom she shares two children — in 1993 after 11 years of marriage.
“Gayle is the mother, sister, friend that I never had,” Winfrey said, before adding: “She fills a role for me that is as solid as mother, or sistering or anything can be.”
