Gayle King Shares Explicit Details from Catching Her Husband Cheating with Her Friend

Rachel McRadyWed, May 27, 2026 at 3:25 PM UTC

0

Gayle King on 'Call Her Daddy' on May 27.
Credit: Call Her Daddy/YouTube -

Gayle King discovered her ex-husband cheating with a friend after returning home unexpectedly with her young children

King revealed the dramatic confrontation included police arriving and her first call being to Oprah Winfrey for support

Despite attempts at reconciliation, King divorced her ex for good in 1993 and focused on co-parenting their two children

Gayle King is opening up about the shocking moment she discovered her now-ex-husband was cheating on her with one of her friends.

The 71-year-old CBS Mornings journalist appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast with host Alex Cooper on Wednesday, May 27, where she didn't hold back in sharing details about how she found her ex William Bumpus mid-affair with their two young kids in the house.

King shared that she learned her flight got canceled and headed home with her kids, only to discover that the house alarm was set with Bumpus in the house.

“He comes flying out of the room. He's got a towel on and he goes, ‘You can't come in,' ” King recalled, saying her reaction was, “What do you mean I can't come in? What are you talking about?”

The broadcast journalist said her ex told her that “someone's here” and still she was skeptical.

“I start searching the house because I didn't believe him. I didn't believe him,” she said. “I get down and there she is, cowering behind the door in my towel, Alex. It was a nice bath sheet.”

King was shocked to find her former friend in such a compromising position.

“I said, ‘I can't believe that you are here and you are doing this,' ” she said, not giving the woman's name. “I even said, ‘I thought we were friends.' I sounded so pitiful.”

Gayle King opened up about her husband's infidelity on 'Call Her Daddy.'
Credit: Call Her Daddy/YouTube

Luckily, King had asked her nanny to get her kids away from the house, so they didn't witness the betrayal, though they knew the woman enough to refer to her as “aunt.”

To make matters worse, the house alarm being triggered sent the police to her door amid the chaos.

“The police came, and they said, ‘Hey, oh my God, it's Gayle King!' ” she said, noting that the police asked for autographs after determining she was okay. “I wanted to say, ‘Could you take out the trash?' But I didn't.”

— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Gayle King opened up about the end of her marriage on 'Call Her Daddy' on May 27.
Credit: Call Her Daddy/YouTube

King said she was desperate to keep others from knowing what was going on, saying, “Because I was thinking, ‘The kids are here. I don't want anybody to know.' That was my main thought — I don't want anybody to know… I kept thinking, I don't want it to be a scene because they're little. They know this person.”

Advertisement

King's first phone call was to her best friend, Oprah Winfrey, who quickly told her, “Oh, girl, you don't even know how bad this is.”

And while King's ex told her not to tell her former friend's husband about the incident because they had a “good marriage,” Winfrey convinced her to call the man.

Alex Cooper interviews Gayle King on 'Call Her Daddy' on May 27.
Credit: Call Her Daddy/YouTube

“I call him, and 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 you would call and say that you thought they were having an affair.' Masterful, isn't that masterful?” King said, noting that both the woman and her husband were “psychologists.”

Though she didn't share the man's real name, she referred to him as “Richard” for the sake of the story.

“He said to me, ‘You are delusional and out of touch with reality and I suggest you get some help,' ” she said of her former friend's husband. “I said, ‘Okay, you think I should get some help? Does your wife have a pink satin pajama top? Does she have some green mint panties that go with that? And oh, by the way, Richard, there are semen stains in my bed. So am I delusional and out of touch with reality? Go f--- yourself.”

And despite her anger over the situation, King revealed that she and her ex went to counseling, but ultimately got divorced before reconciling and splitting again.

“I realized he hadn't really changed, but I was turning into such a shrew,” King recalled. “I would be out in the garage feeling the hood of the car to see if it was warm. I was going through his phone. And I thought, I don't want to live like this, only to find out he was cheating again.”

Ultimately, she decided to call it quits for good in 1993, saying, “I didn't like who I was. Who wants to live like that? I didn't want to be that person.”

King shares daughter Kirby Bumpus, 40, and son William Bumpus Jr., 39, with her ex-husband.

“The kids love their dad. The dad loves the kids, so you've got to figure out a way to navigate it," she said of handling her co-parenting relationship today.

PEOPLE has reached out to Bumpus for comment on King's interview and has not heard back.

In 2016, King's ex admitted to cheating, telling Page Six in a statement at the time, “I have been haunted with this life altering choice. Though I have dealt with this privately … I publicly apologize for the major transgression that dramatically changed all of our lives.”

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”