Gayle King’s ex-husband is speaking out again after the TV legend reopened one of the most painful chapters of her private life.
The CBS Mornings host, 71, recently recalled the devastating moment she came home and discovered her then-husband, William Bumpus, cheating with one of her close friends.
Now Bumpus is publicly apologizing once more, nearly 40 years after the scandal shattered their marriage.
King opened up about the jaw-dropping betrayal during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she told host Alex Cooper that she walked in on Bumpus in the act with a woman she considered a friend.
The moment was as humiliating as it was heartbreaking.
King said she found the woman wearing only a towel and immediately confronted her.
“I can’t believe that you are here and that you are doing this,” King recalled saying. “I can’t believe that you are doing this.”
Then came the line that made the betrayal cut even deeper.
“I thought we were friends!” King remembered saying, admitting the words sounded “so pitiful” in the moment.
As if the scene was not chaotic enough, King said she had accidentally triggered the home alarm system during the confrontation. Police soon arrived at the house, only to recognize her and ask for an autograph.
The morning-show star said she just wanted them gone before they realized what had really happened inside the home.
“I wanted to say, ‘Could you take out the trash?’ But I didn’t,” King recalled. “I just wanted to get them in and out as quickly as possible.”
The painful story is not new. King has spoken about the affair before, including in 2016, when Bumpus also responded with an apology.
But after she brought up the humiliating episode again, Bumpus issued another statement acknowledging the damage his actions caused.
He said King “has every right to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly 40 years ago.”
“I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it,” he added.
Bumpus also said he remains “endlessly grateful” to King for their two children, daughter Kirby, now 40, and son Will, now 39.
The former couple was married from 1982 until 1993. Despite the ugly end to their marriage, Bumpus now says he and King managed to build a healthy relationship as co-parents.
He credited King with helping them successfully raise their children together after the split.
“It was Gayle who chose, with me, to co-parent successfully from the very beginning,” he said, calling it proof of their shared commitment to putting their children first.
Bumpus said that bond carried them through the years and allowed them to remain in “a good place” today.
He also revealed that King recently sent warm birthday wishes to his daughter Poet on her 16th birthday, a gesture he said “meant a great deal.”
The attorney also reflected on the pressures of being married to someone as public as King.
He admitted he “did not fully appreciate Gayle’s public life” during their marriage, saying he is naturally private and struggled with how exposed their lives could feel.
Still, he insisted that his discomfort was “no reflection on her true talent and abilities.”
Bumpus called himself “a genuine admirer and fan” of King and said he has had a “front-row seat” to her remarkable career.
He ended his statement by saying he continues to work on being “the best version” of himself, with support from King, their children, their grandchildren, and his role raising Poet as a single father.
For King, the memory remains one of the most stunning betrayals of her life. But decades later, the former couple appears to have found a way to move forward, even if the scar from that shocking day never fully disappeared.
