Kathie Lee Gifford recalls late husband Frank’s ‘very painful’ affair: ‘We struggled’

Kathie Lee Gifford is opening up about her late husband Frank’s affair in a new interview, which she explained as “very unpleasant.”

In 1997, the previous athlete had an affair with Suzen Johnson, a previous flight attendant. At the time, the married couple’s young children Cassidy and Cody ended up 4 several years old and 7, respectively.

Eventually, the Television character forgave Frank and they were married until eventually his loss of life in 2015 at age 84.

“I could have enable the seed germinate but I do not want to be that man or woman, that bitter, angry, unhappy, depressing human currently being ’cause you know what you stop up performing? You conclusion up building every person all-around you every bit as depressing,” Gifford informed Enjoyment Tonight in a new job interview.

“I have often felt from my earliest youth that I had the option every day of my lifestyle to be a blessing or a stress and I want to be a blessing.”

A single of the motives she stayed with Frank was since of their youngsters.

“It’s not a bed of roses. I signify, we struggled just after that for a extended time. He understood that I would never ever yet again be specifically the exact as I was before I realized the truth of the matter of what he had performed,” she spelled out.

“I knew my young children would be really, incredibly various persons if we experienced damaged up at that time.”

Gifford pointed out that it was also “a choice” to forgive and that she earlier seasoned heartbreak when she was married to Christian composer Paul Johnson. The pair wed in 1976 but break up in 1982 due to irreconcilable variations.

“I’d been married right before to a gentleman who betrayed me deeply and I forgave him right away. You don’t hold on, do not wait to forgive… you are only hurting oneself,” she informed ET. “Immediately forgive simply because adore cannot reside in which dislike does.”

The former “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee” co-host did not want to dwell in a “toxic” surroundings in her marriage with Frank.

“It’s a cancer in your soul and I really do not want that. I really do not want it for me, I do not want it for everyone I appreciate. I want persons to be blessed and we all make our possibilities,” she added. “We all make our options — he [Frank] designed a distinctive a single than I did and we all are living with them. But I can dwell with the alternatives I have made if I have genuinely professional a deep and abiding forgiveness of that person.”

Gifford opened up further about the scandal in her 2020 e book, It’s Never As well Late: Make the Upcoming Act of Your Existence the Most effective Act of Your Daily life. She “didn’t want to” at initial, but felt it was essential to share.