Gayle King‘s ex-husband apologized to her after she recalled the moment she caught him cheating with her close friend.
The “CBS Mornings” co-host recalled the heartbreaking moment on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast on Wednesday. Gayle said she returned home early from a trip and discovered her ex-husband, William Bumpus, had set the security alarm.
Gayle said William rushed out of the bedroom and told her she couldn’t enter. Moments later her friend walked out of the bedroom wearing only a bathrobe.
Gayle told her friend, “‘I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this. I can’t believe that you are doing this.’ And I even said, ‘I thought we were friends!’ It sounded so pitiful.”
“I was thinking, ‘The kids are here. I don’t want anybody to know.’ That was my main thought,” Gayle told podcast host Alex Cooper. “But you know, I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want it to be a scene because they’re little. They know this person.'”
Gayle said her bestie, Oprah Winfrey, was the only person she told about her husband’s infidelity.
Gayle King recalls finding out her ex-husband was cheating with her close friend. ? https://t.co/CytvWlcb21
Credit: Call Her Daddy pic.twitter.com/fIow7DqSEg
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Following the cheating incident, Gayle and William divorced and briefly reconciled. But she realized “he hadn’t really changed.”
Gayle and William share son Will, 39, and daughter Kirby, 40.
After his ex-wife exposed him on the Call Her Daddy podcast, William Bumpus, an attorney, apologized for his behavior in a statement to TMZ on Wednesday. He stressed that the incident happened “forty years ago” and he suggested time should have healed Gayle’s emotional wounds.
“My deepest apologies to Gayle, to our daughter Kirby and her husband, Virgil, to our son William and his wife, Elise, and to our three grandchildren, for the pain I caused decades ago,” he said.
“Those actions were mine. I have long owned them — including publicly in my own words in 2016, which still stand,” William added.
“Gayle has every right to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly forty years ago. I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it.”
William said he struggled with Gayle’s very public life that apparently interfered in their marriage.
“As a private person by nature, I will admit that during our marriage I did not fully appreciate Gayle’s public life,” he said. “I wanted ours to be more private, and that was something I wrestled with, and no reflection on her true talent and abilities. I am proud to have had a front-row seat to Gayle’s remarkable success, and I remain a genuine admirer and fan.”
He added that he is “endlessly grateful to Gayle” who gave him “two of the greatest gifts of my life — our daughter Kirby and our son William.”
Williams acknowledged that Gayle “encouraged and supported” him to get his law degree at Yale.
He also said they “remain in a good place” and he praised her for choosing to “co-parent successfully” after their divorce. “The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years.”
“She recently sent warm wishes to Poet, my teenage daughter, on her 16th birthday, which meant a great deal to us both,” he said.
William concluded by saying he continues to work on being “the best version” of himself and is “grounded by the friendship, encouragement, and support of Gayle over the years, by the love of our grown children and our grandchildren, and by the daily privilege of raising Poet as a single dad.”