Gayle King, has revealed new details about the moment she caught her former husband cheating with one of her close friends.
The 71-year-old broadcaster was speaking on the Call her Daddy podcast when she explained she caught an early flight home from a trip with their two children in tow to find her former husband, attorney William Bumpus, whom she married in 1982, had another woman in their home.
King said that as she walked through the door, the home’s alarm system went off, which was unusual.
Watch the video above.
“Next thing I know, he comes flying out of the room and he’s got a towel on and he goes ‘You can’t come in. Someone’s here’,” she recalled.
After searching the house, she found her friend “cowering behind the door” with only a towel around her.
”I said, ‘I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this’. I even said ‘I thought we were friends!’ It sounded so pitiful.
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“And she was married. And I said, ‘I am calling… her husband’.”
King, who is also Oprah Winfrey’s best friend, said Bumpus urged her not to, and left to take her friend to a train station.
While they were gone, she called Oprah for advice.
“She said ‘Let me get this straight. He left you there alone and went with her? Oh girl, you don’t even know who bad this is,” she said.
“And she said ‘Call her husband’.”
By then, two hours had passed, and when she did finally call her friend’s husband, he had already had a heads up from his wife.
“He said, ‘She told me you would be calling. She said that you came home early, unexpected, and you drew the wrong conclusion. And she told me that you would call and say you thought they were having an affair’.
“He said to me ‘You are delusional and out of touch with reality, and I suggest you get some help’.”
King became angry, describing his wife’s pink satin pyjama top and green panties, as well as the state of her bed, before hanging up on him.
Perhaps surprisingly, the incident, which occurred in 1990, did not mark the end of their marriage, which King had thought was a happy one.
“I was happy, and you know how they say the wife always knows, I swear to God I did not,” she said.
Instead, because they had two young children at the time, King said they tried to work things out. They even got back together after they divorced in 1993.
They eventually split for good after she found out he had cheated again. Again, it was Oprah who was by her side, even though King said she was sick of her friend’s marriage problems by then.
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King first accused her ex of cheating back in 2016. At the time, a spokesperson for Bumpus told Page Six, he had been “haunted with this life-altering choice” for some time and while he had dealt with it privately, he publicly apologised for the transgression.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for Gayle and how she handled herself with grace.”
Meanwhile, King couldn’t help but have a dig at her ex on the podcast.
“I just saw him yesterday because [of] my grandchild’s christening. He ain’t looking so good.”
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