Gayle King’s ex-husband William Bumpus publicly apologized for cheating on her nearly 40 years ago.
“My deepest apologies to Gayle, to our daughter Kirby and her husband, Virgil, to our son William and his wife, Elise, and to our three grandchildren, for the pain I caused decades ago. Those actions were mine,” Bumpus, 70, told TMZ in a statement released on Thursday, May 27. “I have long owned [my actions] — including publicly in my own words in 2016, which still stand.”
Bumpus spoke out after King, 71, opened up to Alex Cooper on Wednesday’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast episode about catching her ex cheating with one of her best friends in 1990.
“Gayle has every right to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly 40 years ago,” he added. “I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it.”
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The attorney stressed that he is “endlessly grateful” to King, both for their marriage and for their coparenting relationship. (King and Bumpus divorced in 1993.)
“She gave me two of the greatest gifts of my life — our daughter Kirby and our son William. It was Gayle who encouraged and supported me through getting my Yale Law degree,” Bumpus recalled. “And it was Gayle who chose, with me, to co-parent successfully from the very beginning — a testament to our shared commitment to our children above all else, and now our grandchildren. The love and camaraderie we forged in that work have carried us all these years.”
He celebrated his “commitment” to coparenting with King “nearly four decades later,” adding that they are “in a good place” today
“As a private person by nature, I will admit that during our marriage I did not fully appreciate Gayle’s public life — I wanted ours to be more private, and that was something I wrestled with, and no reflection on her true talent and abilities,” he stated. “I am proud to have had a front-row seat to Gayle’s remarkable success, and I remain a genuine admirer and fan.”
His statement concluded, “I continue to work at being the best version of myself, grounded by the friendship, encouragement, and support of Gayle over the years, by the love of our grown children and our grandchildren, and by the daily privilege of raising Poet as a single dad. That is where my focus remains — on my family, on my clients, and on the work ahead.”
During her “Call Her Daddy” interview, King revealed that she returned home in June 1990 after a flight was canceled, but her then-husband tried to stop her from coming into the residence. King admitted that she was “so oblivious” that she started “searching the house” to find out what Bumpus meant.
“I didn’t believe him,” she recalled. “I get down and there they are — or there she is cowering behind the door in my towel. It was a nice bath sheet.”
King explained to Cooper, 31, that she kept her composure throughout the confrontation with her husband and his mistress in order to shield her young children from trauma.
“I was thinking, ‘The kids are here, I don’t want anybody to know,’” she remembered. “That was my main thought, ‘I don’t want anybody to know.’ That would not happen to me today.”
She continued, “I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want it to be a scene,’ because they’re little, they know this person. My main thing was how do I — which is what I do about most things — how do I handle this situation in this moment?”
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The couple tried to repair their marriage in the aftermath of Bumpus’ cheating, though they ultimately divorced three years later.
“I was happy,” King confessed. “You know how they say the wife always knows? I swear to God I did not. I did not. … It’s not like we hadn’t had arguments or anything, but I didn’t think that it was such disrepair that he was boinking around.”
As he mentioned in his statement to TMZ, Bumpus previously publicly apologized in 2016 by telling Page Six that he remained “haunted with this life-altering choice.”
“Though I have dealt with this privately … I publicly apologize for the major transgression that dramatically changed all of our lives,” he said at the time.
In addition to his two children with King, Bumpus is a father to daughter Poet, 16, from another relationship.
