Who would be foolish enough to betray legendary broadcast journalist Gayle King?
An ex-husband and an ex-close friend, she discusses.
Gayle is going into detail on how she discovered a heartbreaking affair in a dramatic incident that also involved police.
She called Oprah almost immediately to vent about the double betrayal.
She didn’t ‘know’ about the affair, despite subtle clues
During the Wednesday, May 27 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alex Cooper asked Gayle about her erstwhile marriage to William Bumpus.
Infidelity, they both acknowledged, was a major factor in the divorce.
“You know how they say ‘The wife always knows?’ I did not,” Gayle shared.
Instead, she discovered the betrayal when her flight had been canceled. She and both children headed home, accidentally setting off the alarm as they entered the house.
“He comes flying out of the room. He’s got a towel on and he goes, ‘You can’t come in,'” Gayle recalled.
Gayle King tells Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper about the moment she CAUGHT her husband cheating with one of her best friends after coming home unannounced 😳👀 pic.twitter.com/AXVwkyjdkj
— Killa 🌺 (@KillaKreww) May 27, 2026
“What do you mean I can’t come in? What are you talking about?” Gayle described herself as having asked.
At that, her erstwhile husband — wearing a towel — told her that “someone’s here.” Which is, as far as the words of cheating spouses, not the cleverest invention that we’ve heard.
“I start searching the house because I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him,” Gayle admitted.
“I get down and there she is, cowering behind the door in my towel,” she narrated. “It was a nice bath sheet.”
This was no stranger. This was her close friend, someone close enough to refer to her as her “aunt.” Not anymore, obviously.
‘I sounded so pitiful’
“I said, ‘I can’t believe that you are here and you are doing this,’” Gayle described.
She reflected: “I even said, ‘I thought we were friends.’ I sounded so pitiful.”
Unfortunately, Gayle’s humiliation increased. When the alarm was triggered and not immediately deactivated, the security company dispatched police to her home.
“The police came, and they said, ‘Hey, oh my God, it’s Gayle King!’” the broadcast journalist recalled.
As they asked for autographs, it did occur to her that she had more power here than the average housewife might. “I wanted to say, ‘Could you take out the trash?’ But I didn’t,” she admitted.
Gayle shared a couple of details of what followed — aside from the divorce, that is.
Her ex drove the woman to the train station, so that she could catch a ride back to her own husband. Yes, she was also married.
Gayle also called Oprah, venting to one of the most famous and influential people of the past half-century.
She and William divorced in 1993, after 11 years of marriage.
There is, however, a silver lining to all of this.
In a darker timeline, the world might have known her as iconic broadcast journalist Gayle Bumpus.