Oprah Winfrey reveals Gayle King has been on every vacation with her and partner Stedman since divorce
‘If Stedman didn’t like you, then Stedman wouldn’t have lasted,’ Winfrey tells best friend of 45 years
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Your support makes all the difference.Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King have shared insight into their close friendship, with the friends revealing that most of their vacations are taken together.
Winfrey and King discussed their bond, and why it is stronger than any romantic relationship, during their new Oprah Daily series The OG Chronicles: Joy Ride, which sees the pair reimagine a road trip that they took in 2006 from California to New York.
In the first installment of the three-part series, Winfrey revealed that her friend of 45 years has joined her and her long-term partner Stedman Graham on every vacation they have taken since King divorced her ex-husband William Bumpus in 1993, and that Graham “wouldn’t have lasted” if he didn’t get along with her best friend.
Winfrey, who was in the passenger seat during the Santa Barbara road trip, shared the detail of their relationship while she and King answered a question from a fan who had asked if she should be bothered because her best friend of 27 years goes away with their boyfriend but claims they don’t have the money when she asks to go away together.
After King, 66, admitted that the situation would bother her “a little bit,” Winfrey, 67, claimed that her friend would actually be “bothered a lot”.
However, according to Winfrey, she and King have never had to worry about the issue, as she noted to her close friend “since after your divorce, you were on every vacation with me and Stedman”.
The reminder prompted Winfrey and King to laugh, as the CBS This Morning co-host responded: “The three of us had a wonderful time! There’s pictures of us too. If I was a third wheel, I didn’t know it. Nobody told me.”
King then added: “If Stedman didn’t like me, that would have been tough.”
In response to King’s comment, Winfrey revealed that she would have prioritised her relationship with her best friend over her romantic relationship with her partner of more than 30 years, who she has been with since 1986.
“If Stedman didn’t like you, then Stedman wouldn’t have lasted,” the former talk-show host said. “Because husbands come and go, boyfriends come and go, [but] best friends last forever.”
This is not the first time that Winfrey has opened up about the importance of King’s friendship, as she previously described their long-lasting relationship, which began in 1976 when they first met while working at Baltimore news station WJZ, as “otherworldly”.
“Something about this relationship feels otherworldly to me, like it was designed by a power and a hand greater than my own,” the philanthropist wrote in the August 2006 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, according to Oprah Daily. “Whatever this friendship is, it’s been a very fun ride - and we’ve taken it together.”
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