Photo: Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images Entertainment / Getty Images
Gayle King sat down with Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast and relived one of the most painful chapters of her life — the day she came home unexpectedly and caught her then-husband William Bumpus cheating with one of her close friends, right there in their home, with their two young children nearby.
King's flight had been canceled, so she headed home without calling ahead — no time to warn him she was coming. When she walked in, the house alarm went off. Bumpus came flying out of the bedroom in a towel, blocking the door. "He goes, 'You can't come in,'" King recalled. "What do you mean I can't come in? What are you talking about?"
She didn't believe him. So she searched the house herself.
"I get down and there she is, cowering behind the door in my towel, Alex. It was a nice bath sheet," King said. When she confronted the woman — a friend close enough that King's kids called her "aunt" — King said, "I can't believe that you are here and you are doing this. I even said, 'I thought we were friends.' I sounded so pitiful."
As if that wasn't enough, the house alarm had triggered a police response.
Officers showed up, confirmed King was okay, and then asked for autographs. "I wanted to say, 'Could you take out the trash?' But I didn't," she said.
Her first call was to her best friend, Oprah Winfrey, who told her plainly: "Oh girl, you don't even know how bad this is."
Winfrey urged her to call the woman's husband. When King did, the man — who she referred to as "Richard" — said his wife had already gotten ahead of the story, telling him King had come home early and drawn the wrong conclusion. He told King she was "delusional and out of touch with reality."
King's response was unforgettable. "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**k yourself."
King and Bumpus went to counseling and briefly reconciled, but she ultimately ended the marriage for good in 1993 after realizing he was cheating again.
"I didn't like who I was," she said. "Who wants to live like that?"
The two share daughter, Kirby, and son, William Bumpus Jr. In 2016, Bumpus publicly acknowledged the affair, calling it a "life-altering choice" he has been "haunted" by.
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