On the subject of “the gold standard” of friendships look no additional than Gayle King and Oprah Winfrey.
The besties first met in 1976 and so they’ve been inseparable ever since. Now, each ladies who’re very a lot highly effective figures in their very own proper share with The New York Occasions the key to a friendship that is endured for practically 5 a long time.
As most individuals know by now, Winfrey and King met after they labored on the identical TV station in Baltimore, Maryland. And so they have a snowstorm to thank for hyper charging that friendship. The story goes King could not get residence one night time as a result of inclement climate, and it was Winfrey who invited King to remain at her place that night time.
They bonded like sisters, and the remaining is historical past.
“We sort of became the gold standard for friendship,” Winfrey tells The New York Occasions. “I actually think that is deserved.”
It is true.
Firstly of the interview, King remembers how full strangers will stroll as much as her and introduce themselves in a really distinctive method.
“At the airport on Sunday, these two people walked up to me and said, ‘This is my Oprah. No, she’s my Gayle,'” King says. “Or I’ll be walking and someone will hand me their phone and say, ‘Hey, could you say hi to my Oprah?’ Oprah, you get that, too.”
“All the time,” Winfrey responded. “Still, people will always say, ‘This is my Gayle. ‘She’s my Gayle.'”
And their secret to an eternal friendship? For starters, being brutally sincere with one another.
“She is a blunt truth-teller,” King says of Winfrey. “Even if you don’t want to hear it.”
In addition they genuinely take pleasure in one another’s firm, and apparently, additionally they share quasi-telepathic powers.
“Sometimes we’re both thinking, ‘I want to stab myself in the eye with a fork right now. Oh, my god. Why am I here?'” Winfrey says in reference to occasions she’s attended prior to now. “A couple of times Gayle has said, ‘Should I hand you my fork?'”
There’s additionally zero envy between the media mogul and CBS Mornings co-anchor. Properly, possibly besides that one time.
It was again in July 2021 when there was a singular situation through which King admitted she wished she was Winfrey.
“I did have one time where I was like, ‘Man, I wish I could do that.’ You know what that is?” King requested her pal in a video for Oprah Each day.
“I know. The only time that I’ve ever sensed a hint of, ‘Man, I wish that was me…'” Winfrey recalled. “And that was when I was singing on stage with Tina Turner.”
“And you got to come down those steps and dance with her,” King famous of the 1997 efficiency.
“Gayle said, ‘I wish I could do that,'” Winfrey shared, earlier than turning to her pal, and saying, “But you can’t sing!”
“Can you?!” King retorted.
Throughout an look on The Drew Barrymore Present in April 2021, King additionally turned emotional whereas discussing what King has meant to her all these years.
“I never had therapy — I had all my therapy on television in front of all of y’all — and what I realized is that Gayle was my regulation,” she advised Barrymore. “It makes me want to cry now thinking about it. Every night after the show, I would come home, and I would have these sessions with Gayle where we talked about what happened on the show, or what didn’t happen on the show, and that was the way I kind of regulated myself. So, I would talk to Gayle before bed, and then I would be calmer.”
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