Gayle King is revisiting one of the most painful chapters of her past, sharing detailed memories of the moment she caught her then-husband, William Bumpus, having an affair with a mutual friend.
Speaking on the May 27 episode of Call Her Daddy, Gayle King explained that the discovery happened unexpectedly after a cancelled flight led her to return home earlier than planned. What she walked into, she says, changed everything she thought she knew about her marriage.
“The alarm was set,” Gayle King recalled, describing how unusual it felt for her husband to activate the home security system while she was away. “Which I thought, ‘That’s strange because, you’re in here by yourself. You’re a big, grown-ass man.’ He never sets the alarm.”
That small detail, she said, was the first moment something felt off. But what followed escalated quickly when she arrived home and realized she was not alone in the house.
“Next thing I know,” she said, “he comes flying out of the room and he’s got a towel on. He goes, ‘You can’t come in.’ What do you mean, ‘Can’t?’ I can’t come in, what are you talking about? He goes, ‘You can’t come in. Someone’s here.’”
Gayle King said she refused to accept what she was hearing and began searching the home herself. That search led her to a moment she has never forgotten.
“I get down,” she recalled, “and there she is cowering behind the door in my towel. I said, ‘I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this. I can’t believe that you are doing this. I even said, ‘I thought we were friends.’ I sounded so pitiful.”
The television host said the woman involved was a mutual friend of both her and her then-husband, and the betrayal left her stunned. Her first call after the discovery, she shared, was to longtime friend Oprah Winfrey.
King explained that the incident took place in 1990, though she and Bumpus would remain married for several more years before officially divorcing in 1993 after 11 years together.
Looking back, she also reflected on earlier moments that hinted that something was wrong. One memory stood out from a casual tennis scene involving Bumpus and the woman.
“I always say if I were writing a book, the first line in my book would be, ‘Whack,’ the sound of a tennis ball,” she said. “She said, ‘Nice shot, Bill.’ And the way she said it, there was such an intimacy in her voice that the hair stood up on the back of my neck.”
At the time, she said she tried to rationalize what she was noticing, even confronting her husband later in the car. But his denial only deepened her confusion.
“They try to gaslight you, by the way,” Gayle King said. “‘What are you talking about?’ And so he goes, ‘Absolutely not.’”
Despite her suspicions, Gayle King said she still had to confront what she saw with her own eyes before fully understanding the reality of the situation. Even then, she noted, it took time before she was ready to leave the marriage.
