Gayle King's parents are Peggy Tucker and Emmett Scott King. King was born in Chevy Chase, Maryland,[5] and from age six to eleven she lived in Ankara, Turkey, where her father was deployed. She returned with her family to the United States[6] in 1966, where her father worked as an electrical engineer. King graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a degree in psychology.[6]
King worked as a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 1991, King briefly co-hosted an NBC daytime talk show with Robin Wagner called Cover to Cover, which was canceled after 13 weeks.[7] In 1997, she was offered her own syndicated talk show, The Gayle King Show, which was canceled after one season due to low ratings.[10][11] In September 2006, King began to host The Gayle King Show on XM Satellite Radio.
On January 3, 2011, King began hosting a new show, also called The Gayle King Show, on OWN.[12]The Gayle King Show ended on November 17, 2011, as a result of King going to CBS to co-anchor CBS This Morning alongside Charlie Rose[13] and a series of third co-anchors including for a time Norah O'Donnell.[14] The show succeeded in the ratings. King and Rose were noted as having good on-air chemistry.[15][16] The two became friends as well, and remained friends even after Rose exited from CBS due to the sexual misconduct allegations against him.[17][18][14]
Before joining CBS News, King worked as a special correspondent for Good Morning America.[19] On November 10, 2011, King secured a deal with CBS to co-anchor CBS This Morning, beginning on January 9, 2012.[13] She publicly called for CBS to have full transparency when it was learned CBS planned on keeping the findings of sexual abuse and harassment at the network private.[20][21] She received recognition for remaining stoic during an interview with R. Kelly, who rose from his chair and began to scream and beat his chest in an interview discussing the sexual abuse allegations made against him.[22][23][24]
In 2018, King was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.[25] She was also chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2019.[26]
In 2020, shortly after the death of Kobe Bryant, King received social media criticism for a CBS This Morning interview with former WNBA player Lisa Leslie, in which King brought up Bryant's sexual assault allegations from 2003.[27] Rapper Snoop Dogg was among those who criticized King, though he later apologized.[27] She received support, particularly from long-time friend Oprah Winfrey.[27] King said CBS had used an out-of-context excerpt from the interview. The network said in a statement that the excerpt was not reflective of the "thoughtful, wide-ranging interview" King had conducted with Leslie.[28]
In January 2022, King had extended her contract with CBS News to continue as co-anchor of CBS Mornings.[29]
On April 22, 2023, CNN announced that King will co-host with Charles Barkley on their weekly primetime show King Charles which debuted that fall. King will continue her role as co-anchor of CBS Mornings.[30]
Personal life
King has been a close friend of Oprah Winfrey since 1976.[31] In a 2010 interview with Barbara Walters, Winfrey said of King, "She is the mother I never had; she is the sister everybody would want; she is the friend everybody deserves; I don't know a better person".[32]
From 1982 to 1993, King was married to William Bumpus, an attorney and an assistant attorney general in Connecticut.[3][33] They share a daughter, Kirby, and a son, William Bumpus Jr.[34][33]
In 2023, King appeared on Celebrity Family Feud. Competing against Sophia Bush, King's team lost.[35]
↑ Baldoni, John (September 12, 2018). "Gayle King calls for CBS to release results of Leslie Moonves investigation". Variety. Retrieved January 9, 2019. 'I'm sick and sick of the story and sickened... by everything that we keep hearing,' King said. Regarding the plan to keep the report private, she said: 'How can we have this investigation and not know how it comes out? Les Moonves has been on the record, he says, listen, he didn't do these things, that it was consensual, that he hasn't hurt anybody's career. I would think it would be in his best interests for us to hear what the report finds out.' King said noted, as have many others, that the women who have come forward with claims about Moonves have little motivation to fabricate or exaggerate past incidents with Moonves. 'You have women who are coming forward, very credibly talking about something that's so painful and so humiliating. It's been my experience that women don't come out and speak this way for no reason. They just don't,' King said. 'And so I don't know how we move forward if we don't — we at CBS – don't have full transparency about what we find.... In our own house we must have transparency.'
1 2 Willis, Jackie (July 7, 2016). "Gayle King's Ex-Husband, William Bumpus, Apologizes for Cheating on Her 26 Years Ago". Archived from the original on March 8, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2020. King and Bumpus were married for 11 years, and share a daughter and a son together, Kirby and William Bumpus Jr. King's daughter, Kirby Bumpus, is engaged to Virgil Miller, the Chief of Staff of Cedric Richmond.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
