Kathie Lee Gifford Has Opened Up About Her Life – And The Revelations She’s Made Are Heartbreaking

Kathie Lee Gifford has been one of America’s favorite TV personalities for more than three decades. The host got candid in a recent interview revealing the true trauma of her dramatic personal life…

Born Singer

Kathie Lee Gifford was raised in Bowie, Maryland, where she developed an early passion for singing and the performing arts. After graduating from Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University with a degree in music and drama, she was hired to showcase her vocals on Name That Tune. Her career was only just beginning…

Big Break Arrives

Gifford nabbed her first big break when she moved into daytime TV. In 1985 she was chosen to replace Ann Abernathy as the co-anchor of WABC-TV’s The Morning Show alongside popular TV host, Regis Philbin. Just three years later, their rebranded show would make it big. Live with Regis and Kathie Lee soon became one of the most popular shows of its kind during the 1990s, receiving worldwide acclaim along with eight Daytime Emmy nominations.

Untimely End

After ending her long-running partnership with Philbin in 2000, Gifford acted as a special correspondent on syndicated magazine show The Insider. In 2008 she joined Hoda Kotb as the co-host of NBC morning show Today’s fourth hour. And by 2014 the ratings had skyrocketed, increasing by 13 percent.

Not Just A Presenter

But Gifford also continued to pursue her first love – music, during her flourishing daytime TV career. The star has released over a dozen studio albums since her debut album 1992’s Sentimental Journey. The multi-talented star also spent a lot of time in musical theatre, writing Broadway show Scandalous: The Life and Trials of Aimee Semple McPherson and playing Miss Hannigan in a Madison Square Garden production of Annie.

More To Come

Gifford is a true multi-talented star. She played herself in an episode of Seinfeld and the so-bad-it’s-good movie Sharknado 3: Oh Hello No! She also voiced Echidna in the popular ’90s fantasy series, Hercules. Gifford has also penned numerous children’s books and two autobiographies, Just When I Thought I’d Dropped My Last Egg: Life and Other Calamities and The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi.

Not So Happy Ever After

Before Gifford became a household name she was married to Christian composer, producer and arranger Paul Johnson. The couple, who graced many covers of various religious publications together, got hitched in 1976. But their highly-publicized relationship would sadly not last. Just six years after they tied the knot, they filed for divorce.

Happiness For A Second Time

In 1986 Gifford found love once again, this time with sports commentator and former American football star Frank Gifford, who was 23 years older than the star at the time of their first meeting. The couple soon welcomed their first child, Cody Newton, in 1990, and their second, Cassidy Erin, three years later. Gifford also acted as loving stepmother to Frank’s three kids from his first marriage to Maxine Avis Ewart.

‘Til Death Do Us Part

Tragically, Frank passed in 2015, just a week before his 85th birthday. Gifford paid tender tribute to her late loving husband when she co-penned the song “He Saw Jesus.” In a recent interview for non-profit Christian organization I Am Second, the daytime TV star further revealed how her beloved husband’s passing deeply affected her.

Tragedy Takes Its Toll

Gifford described the devastating moment she discovered her husband of almost thirty years had died. “On a beautiful Sunday morning, I found my husband [had] passed on to heaven,” she said. “I had a peace that passes all understanding. He met Jesus and Jesus took his breath away.”

Revealing Her Darkest Moments

Gifford revealed that her son felt an identical sense of peace after unsuccessfully trying to revive his father. She then went on to talk about the grieving process the family endured, “We’ve had our sad moments of missing him, but you don’t find somebody under those circumstances and find yourself rejoicing even as you’re holding your dead loved one,” she said. “My tears were tears of joy.”

Heartbreaking Admission

Gifford then went on to make a heartbreaking admission. “My biggest struggle at this point of my life is loneliness,” she confessed. “I’ve lost my parents, my husband is gone now, and my children live far away from me. There are times when I am overwhelmed by loneliness.”

Isolation And Loneliness Take Over

However, despite her feelings of loneliness and intense sadness, Gifford asserts that she refuses to give up hope. “I’ve discovered that if I just keep thinking about what I’ve lost, I don’t pay any attention to what I still have. I don’t want to live my life in hopelessness. I’ve been there.”

Everything Happens For A Reason

Gifford still believes that everything happens for a divine purpose and she maintains that she has no time for self-pity. “I couldn’t bear to think about, oh, woe is me, I’m a widow. No. I’m so grateful that Frank is exactly where he is supposed to be,” she said.

Not Always Peachy Times

Gifford also admitted that her relationship with Frank wasn’t always a happy one – but that her faith helped her to overcome their marital problems. “My husband was unfaithful to me during a brief time in our marriage,” she revealed. “It was devastating to me, but I was able to stay in my marriage and have God heal it.”

Honesty Creates Ripple Effect

It seems that her generosity of spirit and honesty about her struggles really struck a chord with many, as Gifford went on to add, “I’ve heard from hundreds of thousands of people since then who got courage from that. Courage to forgive their husbands or their wives. Courage to keep their families together. Not everybody does, but I’ve heard from hundreds of thousands of people through the years who did.”

Scandalous Times

Gifford was referring to the 1997 public scandal in which her late husband was seduced by an ex-flight attendant named Suzen Johnson. Globe magazine set up the infamous honeytrap, reportedly paying Johnson somewhere between $75,000 and $125,000 to lure the famous icon to a hotel room and videotape their illicit encounter. It was a stunt that even the National Enquirer editor would describe as “downright cruel.”

How Did She Bounce Back?

She admitted that it was heart-wrenching and she felt deeply humiliated. She wanted to give up on their marriage, but she knew deep down that she owed it to their godly vows to give him another chance, and in that she has helped so many others to do the same with their loved ones.

Revealing The Truth

“Sometimes you run out of time to build [trust] again. I was grateful we could,” Kathie Lee — who has children Cody, 27, and Cassidy, 23, with Frank — recently shared. “I’m so grateful my children were young and didn’t know. By the time they did, they realized how much their parents love each other — and them — by sticking it out.”

Moving On

Kathie Lee opened up about how she’s moving on. “I’m not [just] coping, I’m thriving,” she said at the time, adding that she won’t be dating anytime soon. “We are trying to adjust to the new normal, and that will take a while. I keep expecting him to come in the door.”

Searching For Her Purpose

At the age of 63, Gifford admits she now wants to truly ensure she makes the most of each passing year. She told I Am Second, “Every single day if I wake up and I have a pulse, I have a purpose. I want to be purposeful in my life. I’m also getting too old to waste any of it.”

No Slowing Down Just Yet

In March 2018, Gifford released a new single “Love Me to Death,” co-written with Grammy Award winner Brett James. She also revealed that she was filming an independent movie which shares the same name as the touching track. It appears that she has no plans to retire just yet, and is still in search of her true and higher purpose.

How Does She Find Strength?

What’s more, in an interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, Gifford recently discussed how her faith stands as her most precious personal possession. When asked why she’s so vocal about her religion, the star replied, “If you had the cure for cancer, would you keep it quiet? I have the cure for the malignancy of the soul. And He has a name. And it’s Jesus.”

How She Deals With Celebrity Scandals

In light of her co-star getting fired, she admitted “I’m grappling with, should I even share something? But I guess I really should, I don’t feel that Matt has betrayed us in any way at all but when I found out that my husband had betrayed me, you question your own judgment. You say, ”Was everything a lie?” And I think we have to very much fight against that, that the man we know and adored was the man we loved and adored and continue to.”

Surprising Connections

Almost everyone who’s anyone in Hollywood knows the Kardashian clan—but it appears that no one knows them better than Gifford. While the talk show star and the reality TV stars are rarely spotted in the same circles, it seems the two families go way back. Keep reading to learn all about Gifford’s unexpected ties to the famous reality TV stars.

A Helping Hand

In 1993, Kathie Lee and Kris reportedly cemented a strong and intimate relationship after enduring some mutual family struggles. Speaking to People on the red carpet in 2015, Kathie Lee revealed that she’d suffered two miscarriages before she successfully became pregnant with her daughter, Cassidy, and Kris was there to give her unwavering support through the difficult period. 

Who Knew?

Kathie Lee and her late husband, Frank, were actually named Godparents to Kendall and Kylie Jenner. In her memoir, Kris Jenner…And All Things Kardashian, the matriarch revealed that Kathie Lee even played a part in naming Kendall. “I started throwing out names to Kathie Lee,” she wrote: “Kameron…Kendall—and she stopped me at Kendall.”