Gayle King catching her ex-husband having an affair with her former friend kicked off the dissolution of their marriage.
The media personality recalled confronting her former husband, William Bumpus, during the act while on the Wednesday (May 27) episode of podcast Call Her Daddy. King initially refused to tell the husband of her then-friend about what she saw but eventually did so after being urged by her best friend, entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey.
Around the 32-minute mark of the interview below, King told CHD host that she caught her husband cheating in 1990 after she rushed home when her flight was canceled. Upon entering the home, King noticed that the alarm was on, which she found “strange” considering that Bumpus could protect himself.
“He comes flying out of the room. He's got a towel on and he goes, ‘You can't come in,'“ King recalled, adding that her response was, ‘What do you mean I can't come in? What are you talking about?’”
King was in denial after Bumpus, whom she shares 2 children with, informed her that someone was in the house, but while scouring the home, she stumbled upon her then-friend, who was “cowering behind the door” while wearing a bath towel.
“I said, ‘I can't believe that you are here and you are doing this,'“ King added. “I even said, ‘I thought we were friends.' I sounded so pitiful.”
Without revealing the identity of the woman, whom she called “Casey,” King explained that she called her nanny to take her children elsewhere, although they referred to the woman as “aunt.”
The CBS Mornings co-host went on to share that the alarm to the home went off, which alerted the police to arrive. “The police came, and they said, ‘Hey, oh my God, it's Gayle King!'“ she said, adding that the authorities also asked for her autograph. “I wanted to say, ‘Could you take out the trash?' But I didn't.”
“I just wanted to get them in and out as quickly as possible,” King continued. “That was not a good night.”
Despite King not wanting “anybody to know” about the situation, she thought about calling the woman’s husband, but Bumpus asked her. According to him, the woman and her husband had a “good marriage.” It was after speaking to Winfrey, who was her “first call,” that King changed her mind.
The man, who was referred to as “Richard” knew that King would call, and shared that he was told that the news anchor “drew the wrong conclusion.”
“He said to me, ‘You are delusional and out of touch with reality and I suggest you get some help,’” King said before detailing his wife’s pajamas and revealing that there were “semen stains” in her bed.
King also shared that she and Bumpus attended marriage counseling before divorcing and later attempting to reconcile. The brief repair of their relationship would fall apart a second and final time after Bumpus cheated again. By 1993, the former spouses were done for good, although King managed to make co-parenting work for their daughter Kirby, 40, and son William Jr., 39.
King went on to share that she recently saw Bumpus, who she joked wasn’t “looking so good” but has a new girlfriend, who she called “very nice and lovely.”
“But that only comes with time before somebody would say, ‘How are you?’ I go, ‘You know what happened to me?’” King joked. “Then you see their eyes glaze over and you go, ‘I just wanted to say hello, lady.’”
In a 2016 statement to Page Six, Bumpus apologized for the affair, saying that he was “haunted with a life-altering choice.” “Though I have dealt with this privately … I publicly apologize for the major transgression that dramatically changed all of our lives,” he added through his rep.
