Gayle King’s Ex Speaks Out After She Revisits Affair That Ended Their Marriage, Social Media Reacts
Following Gayle King’s emotional retelling of the moment she found her husband with her friend, William Bumpus praised the journalist and apologized to their family.
Black News 
During a recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy, Gayle King detailed the moment she learned that her friend was having an affair with her then-husband.
King, 71, was married to attorney William Bumpus from 1982 to 1993. The then couple share two children, daughter Kirby and son William Bumpus Jr.
King returned home early from a trip to find Bumpus and her then-friend in her marital home. Bumpus was reportedly caught off guard and told King that she couldn’t go into the couple’s bedroom. The new anchor then found her friend in the room, wearing nothing but a towel.
“I was thinking, ‘The kids are here. I don’t want anybody to know.’ That was my main thought,” King told host Alex Cooper. “And that would not happen to me today. It would be like, ‘Get this [person] and take her [away].’ But you know, I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want it to be a scene because they’re little. They know this person.'”
Well, Bumpus must’ve heard the podcast because he reached out to Page Six to share a lengthy statement apologizing for what happened.
“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,” he began. “Those actions were mine.”
Bumpus added that King was well within her right “to share what was a painful chapter that changed the trajectory of our marriage and our family nearly forty years ago,” Page Six reports.
“I respect her right to tell her story, and that’s where I’ll leave it,” he added.
Bumpus noted that he “remain[s] endlessly grateful” to King for giving him “two of the greatest gifts of [his] life”: their children — daughter Kirby, now 40, and son Will, now 39.
And also credited King for having “encouraged and supported” him throughout his studies at Yale Law.
“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,” he said. “The love and camaraderie we forged in that work carried us all these years.”
Bumpus added that he and King “remain in a good place” all these years later and expressed joy when pointing out that King “sent warm wishes” to his daughter Poet on her 16th birthday — an action he said “meant a great deal.”
The attorney noted that he’s “a genuine admirer and fan” who’s had a “front-row seat to Gayle’s remarkable success.”
See social media’s reaction to the admission below.
