"I'm not a lesbian."
That's what a teary-eyed Oprah Winfrey told Barbara Walters in an interview, airing Thursday on ABC, in which the queen of daytime television addressed longtime rumors that she and Gayle King are or were lovers.
“I’m not even kind of lesbian," Winfrey told Walters. “And the reason why [the rumor] irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I’m lying. That’s No. 1. No. 2, why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life.”
"We asked her a simple question about her relationship with Gayle King," Walters explained in a teaser on "Good Morning America" Wednesday. "And this was her answer. Very personal."
“She is the mother I never had," Oprah said. "She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don’t know a better person. … I don’t … know a better person.”
"Shoot! I told myself I wasn't going to cry," Oprah said, before calling for a tissue.
The hour-long special is obstensibly Oprah's exit interview from daytime TV as she prepares to launch her OWN cable network next month.
