Gayle King says she's OK if people
think she's in a lesbian relationship with Oprah Winfrey.
The
two women have been dogged by such rumors for years, but earlier
this month the talk show queen denied the pair were romantically
involved.
“I'm not a lesbian,” Winfrey told
ABC's Barbara Walters. “I'm not even kind of a lesbian.”
She added that the rumors annoy her
because it means “somebody must think I'm lying.”
A tearful Winfrey praised King as “the
mother I never had … the sister everybody would want … the friend
that everybody deserves.” (The video is embedded in the right
panel of this page.)
King
told USA Today's Ann Oldenburg that she cried upon hearing
Winfrey's sentiment. She also said she was OK with people
thinking she's a lesbian.
“It used to bother me, and now I say,
'OK, if people believe it, there's nothing we can do to change their
minds,'” King said. “Oprah has been so outspoken and I have
about my dating life, my desire to have a significant other, that
it's just silly that we would deny or hide that because it implies
something is wrong. That's what bothers me more than anything.
There's nothing wrong.”