Oprah Winfrey has denied the persistent rumor that she and her best friend Gayle King have been secretly romantically involved for decades.
During her performance in Melinda French Gates’ Moments that make us In an interview series, the 70-year-old media mogul, who has been with her partner Stedman Graham for more than 35 years, looked back on her close bond with the 69-year-old King.
“I think we’ve shared pretty much everything and I would have to say it wasn’t even a navigational issue,” the former daytime television legend said. “For years, people were saying we were gay, and listen, we’ve always fought against that. And people may still think that.”
King joked that she used to invite Oprah on a show and make it clear they were just friends, because it was “hard enough” for her to get a date on a Saturday night without people thinking they were together.
“If we were gay, we would tell you!” the mother of two assured viewers.
Oprah Winfrey has denied the long-standing rumor that she and her best friend, Gayle King, are secretly romantically involved
What she thinks is the reason they’re more than just friends is that people “aren’t used to seeing women with such a genuine connection.”
“I think our friendship has worked because Gayle is happier — not happy, but happier for me, with every success or every victory or every challenge that I have, than I am for myself,” the 20-time Emmy winner said.
She continued, “And I feel just as happy as she does — I can’t be happier than, can’t top Gayle. You can’t top her. I’m just as happy for her.”
Winfrey noted that even a “touch of jealousy about anything” between friends can ruin the relationship.
“I just assumed that everyone had a really good friend,” King said of her and Winfrey’s friendship. “I just assumed that every woman — maybe not for men — but I just assumed that every woman had at least one.”
King also indicated that she’s not afraid to be honest with her best friend.
“In Oprah’s life, everyone is always very flattering and very agreeing with the things she says,” she explained. “And sometimes I just say, ‘That’s just not true. Your hair doesn’t look good.'”
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in 2013, Winfrey denied ever taking “a dip in Lady’s pond.”
During her appearance on Melinda French Gates’ interview series Moments That Make Us, the 70-year-old media mogul reflected on her close bond with King, 69 (seen in 2019)
When asked if she had ever been intimate with a woman before, Winfrey replied, “No, no, I haven’t. Thank you.”
Three years earlier, in an interview with Barbara Walters, she said she was “not a lesbian,” or “even a little bit.”
“Why would you want to hide it? That’s not how I live my life,” she said of her sexuality.
When asked to describe her relationship with King, Winfrey said her girlfriend was “the mother” she “never had” and the “sister everyone wishes they had.”
“She’s the friend that everyone deserves,” Winfrey said. “I don’t know a better person.”
Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together for 35 years
Winfrey previously revealed that King has accompanied her and Steadman on every trip together since 1993 (seen in 1994)
King has said in the past that it’s “irritating and stupid that anyone would still doubt” the nature of their relationship.
‘I think the most disturbing thing that bothers me about it is the fact that we deny it, and we’ve both said this many times, implies that there’s something wrong with being gay. That people would think that we’re gay and deny it as if there’s something wrong. I think that’s unfair to gay people. I think it’s unfair to Stedman [Graham]“I think it’s unfair to me and I think it’s unfair to her,” King said on Nightline in 2011.
In 2006, the friends laid out the facts in an issue of Winfrey’s magazine, O.
“I get why people think we’re gay,” Winfrey admitted. “There’s no definition in our culture for this kind of connection between women. So I get why people have to label it — how can you be that close without it being sexual?”
“If we were gay, we’d tell you!” King assured viewers (seen February 2024)
The pair also confirmed that they called each other “four times a day.”
King was adamant at the time that there was “nothing wrong with homosexuality” and that if they were, they would come out.
King then confessed, “If Oprah were a man, I would marry her.”
“There’s something about this relationship that feels alien to me, like it was designed by a power and a hand greater than my own,” Winfrey concluded. “Whatever this friendship is, it’s been a really fun ride.”
The duo first met early in their careers, when they worked for Baltimore’s WJZ station.
Oprah was a presenter at the time and King worked as a production assistant in another department.
In an issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, King recalled how Oprah generously invited her to stay with her during a snowstorm
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live in 2013, Winfrey denied ever taking “a dip in Lady’s pond” (photo in January 2024)
“We became friends that first night, because for the first time I met someone who I felt was me,” Gayle said. “I had never met anyone like that before. Certainly not another black girl. I grew up in an all-white community.”
Looking back on themselves in their 20s, Winfrey said they both felt like “outsiders” and “didn’t fit into the image that other people had of what it was like to be a black girl.”
“But we still had a very strong sense of being black and were very proud of it. So to meet another black girl like that was, wow!” King added.
Since their fateful meeting, the friends have spent countless holidays together and collaborated professionally on several projects.
King even chose Winfrey to be the godmother of her two children, Kirby Bumpus (38) and William Bumpus Jr. (37).
The duo first met early in their careers while working for Baltimore’s WJZ station; seen in 2001
King says that even after all these years, she still doesn’t get tired of interviews where she’s asked about her best friend.
“I never get tired of being asked about Oprah, because I think it’s so wonderful that she’s loved for who she is. I think it’s so wonderful that she’s embraced for who she is. And that just makes me proud,” she told Newsweek in March 2024.
She explained: ‘I feel the same way about Oprah that I feel about [my] favorite son, Will, and [my] “My favorite daughter, Kirby, I can’t wait for people to meet her because they never let me down.”
Ultimately, King said she never saw herself in Oprah’s “shadow.”
“I see myself in her light. So when someone says something to me about her, I’m never offended,” she gushed.