Gayle King Opens Up About Catching Her Ex Cheating in 'Call Her Daddy' Interview

She came home early from a work trip, her kids were in the house, and what she walked in on derailed more than just her marriage. And her story gets much messier from there.

Gayle King has been one of the most recognizable names in television for decades, but on May 27, 2026, her conversation with Alex Cooper on "Call Her Daddy" went live, and she got more personal than she has in years, revisiting a betrayal so specific she still remembers the exact timestamp.

And she finally filled in all the details of that moment, including the revenge move she almost pulled off. Plus, her ex has actually responded to the episode, and beyond that, King also revealed the star athlete she'd seriously consider dating.

She Never Saw It Coming

In a 2016 Vanity Fair interview, King was asked which living person she most despised. Her answer was, "I'm not a huge fan of the woman I caught naked with my now ex-husband on June 24, 1990, at 9:16 p.m."

But let's start at the beginning. King was married to Connecticut-based attorney William G. Bumpus in 1982. They had two children together and only got divorced in 1993, after 11 years of marriage.

Before that fateful 1990 night, however, she believed they were doing fine. "I was happy," she told Cooper on the podcast. "And you know how they say the wife always knows? I swear to God I did not."

But looking back, there was one moment that planted a seed of doubt, even if she dismissed it at the time. It happened during a tennis match, when the other woman said, "Nice shot, Bill," and something in the tone stopped King cold.

"The hair stood up on the back of my neck," she recalled. The woman was a married friend, and both couples were close. Their kids were friends and their lives intertwined. When King brought it up to her then-husband on the drive home, and he denied it, she told herself she was overreacting.

Oprah Winfrey had once told her that it normally starts with "a whisper," then it turns into "a pebble," and if you keep ignoring it, it becomes a "catastrophe."

And King's catastrophe came on a night she was not supposed to be home.

The Night She Walked In

She had driven herself to the airport for a work trip to Washington, D.C., when the airline called to say her flight had been canceled. There was no time to warn anyone at home. She grabbed her kids, rushed back to the airport, and headed home. "I didn't have time to do anything. We jumped in, got to the airport, got in the car, came home," she said.

The first sign that something was wrong was that the house alarm was set. But her then-husband never set the alarm when he was home alone.

Then he came out of the bedroom in a towel, blocking the door. "He goes, 'You can't come in.'" When she questioned if someone else was in the house, he denied it.

But King pushed past him and searched room by room, telling herself there was no one there, until she found her.

"There she is, cowering behind the door in my towel. Alex, it was a nice bath sheet, in my towel. In my towel."

What made it worse was that this was someone she trusted. The therapist she later spoke to pointed out that the discovery of his affair probably had to be that extreme for her to believe it at all. He might have been able to gaslight her once again.

At that moment, King confronted the woman directly. "I thought we were friends," she told her. "I sounded so pitiful. 'I thought we were friends.'"

And even after being caught, her then-husband had the gall to offer to drive the other woman to the train station so her husband would not find out. He left King there, alone with their kids, to sit with what she had just seen.

The Revenge She Almost Got

With her children in the house, King held herself together, but it was entirely deliberate. "I don't want anybody to know," she told Cooper. "That was my main thought."

She did not call her mother, even though they spoke twice a day. She did not call any of her three sisters. The only person she told was Winfrey.

And Winfrey had one piece of advice to give: call the woman's husband. King hesitated because Bumpus had insisted the other woman's marriage was a good one and begged her not to blow it up.

"They have a good marriage?" King recalled thinking. "The girl's pajama bottoms are in my bed." Still, it took two full hours and Winfrey pushing her hard before she finally dialed.

Unfortunately, it was a bit too late. The other woman had already gotten ahead of it. Her husband picked up the phone and told King that his wife had warned him she might call, that King had come home unexpectedly and drawn the wrong conclusion.

Then he delivered his verdict:

"You are delusional and out of touch with reality, and I suggest you get some help."

Both the woman and her husband were psychologists, which King noted with a dry aside, so the gaslighting was precise and practiced. Still, King was ready. She asked him whether his wife owned a pink satin pajama top, a pair of green mint panties, and then brought up the physical evidence she had found in her own bed.

"So, am I delusional and out of touch with reality?" she asked. Then she told him exactly what she thought of him and hung up the phone.

"Wasn't I strong?" she laughed, recounting it to Cooper. It had taken over two hours, and Winfrey saying, "Are you crazy? Call him," to get her there, but she got there.

The Trauma This Cost

That exchange on "Call Her Daddy" was not the first time the affair came up publicly. In 2019, King and Winfrey appeared together on Oprah Daily, fielding audience questions about friendship and how relationships change over time.

A viewer named Amy Boyle from Chicago asked whether it was better to hold on to your original circle or keep adding new people as you get older.

King explained that meeting new friends gets harder as you get older. Winfrey then jumped in with a reason why King might feel that way more than most. The talk show brought up the affair, recounting how King had discovered her friend with her husband and said, "I thought you were my friend!"

But Winfrey also pointed out that the other woman had responded to that with, "She said, 'I never liked you!'" King confirmed it without flinching.

His Apology, Nearly Four Decades Later

The timing of the podcast episode prompted Bumpus to speak publicly. In a statement to TMZ, he said:

"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. Those actions were mine. I have long owned them, including publicly in my own words in 2016, which still stand."

He also acknowledged King's right to discuss the matter publicly, noting that she has every right to share a painful chapter that altered the course of their marriage and family nearly 40 years ago.

Bumpus then credited King for shaping much of his life in the subsequent years. He was endlessly grateful to her for the greatest gifts of his life, their kids. But King did even more, supporting him through his studies at Yale, and how they co-parented beautifully. King would also treat his daughter well.

His statement closed on a personal note: "I continue to work at being the best version of myself, 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."

Where She Stands on Love Now

The "Call Her Daddy" conversation did not stay in the past. Cooper asked King what she wants for herself over the next five to ten years, and her answer was surprising.

"I would really like to meet somebody," she said. She no longer feels the need to remarry, but she does want companionship. "I do think life is better when shared."

She has a full life; she was clear about that, but she is open to someone who finds her fun to be around. And she would prefer someone younger, "not someone I could give birth to, but younger. You know, like Tom Brady's age."

She also admitted that when she recently ran into Brady in person, she had to stop herself from saying something about how good-looking he is.

The conversation also turned to the rumors that have followed King and Winfrey for years, the suggestion that their closeness signals something more than friendship.

King told Cooper it used to bother her genuinely, especially right after her divorce, when the National Enquirer ran a story claiming the split happened because the two women were secretly involved.

"It's hard enough for me to get a date on a Saturday night and now people think I'm a lesbian," she recalled telling Winfrey at the time, pushing her to address it publicly on her show.

Winfrey refused. Her position was simple: leave it alone. King pushed back, pointing out that it was easy for Winfrey to say that when she already had a partner.

Eventually, King let it go and said she genuinely does not think about it much anymore. "As long as I feel good about what I'm doing, the people I respect and trust are okay with it," she told Cooper. "Otherwise, you'll drive yourself nuts."

The "Call Her Daddy" interview made clear that what King actually felt that night in 1990 was something far more complicated than hatred, and that working through it, with Winfrey on the phone and her kids down the hall, took a kind of composure that took her years to fully recognize in herself.