Oprah Winfrey: 'I'm not a lesbian'
The rumors have been around for years. She even made light about them recently. But Oprah Winfrey has once again stated flatly: "I'm not a lesbian."
"I'm not even kind of a lesbian," the talk-show queen, 56, tells Barbara Walters in an upcoming interview on ABC. "And the reason why [the rumor] irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I'm lying. That's number one. Number two ... why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life."
The rumors have focused on Winfrey's friend Gayle King. But Winfrey says that relationship is extremely close in a whole different way.
"She is ... the mother I never had. 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," Winfrey says while choking up.
"It's making me cry because I'm thinking about ... how much ... I probably have never told her that. Tissue, please. I now need tissue. I've never told her that."