Kathie Lee Gifford is speaking out this week to reveal why she isn’t open to finding love again. This comes one month before what will be the 11 year anniversary of her beloved NFL legend husband Frank Gifford, who she was married to for nearly 30 years.
‘I’m Not Dating Anybody…’
“I am not dating anybody right now, and I don’t want to date,” Kathie Lee, 72, told People Magazine. “I’m not looking, and I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.”
“I had an opportunity for that to maybe happen, and it didn’t work out,” she continued. “Frank will always be the love of my life. If God wants to do something miraculous, like give me another great love [then I’m open to it]. And so I leave room for the miraculous to happen.”
Watch Kathie Lee talk more about this in the video below.
Kathie Lee And Frank’s History
Kathie Lee met Frank, who was 23 years older than her, back in 1982. At the time, he was a football star-turned broadcaster, and she was hosting Good Morning America. The two of them quickly fell in love, and they married in 1986. They went on to welcome two children: a son Cody in 1990 and a daughter Cassidy in 1993.
Though they had many years of happiness together, Kathie Lee still remembers their infamous rocky patch in 1997. It was that year that a tabloid caught Frank cheating in a Manhattan hotel room with former flight attendant Suzen Johnson. It later came to light that Suzen had been hired by the tabloid to seduce Frank.
Kathie Lee was understandably devastated by the affair. After taking a week away from both home and work, however, she decided to try and work things out with Frank.
“I came home a week after that happened [to reconcile with Frank],” Kathie Lee recalled. “There’s not a day that goes by that somebody doesn’t come up to me and say, ‘I just want you to know I had separated from my husband, and I went back. We went for counseling. We healed our marriage.'”
The Giffords were happy for the next 18 years. Sadly, Frank died of a heart attack on August 9, 2015. That day, it was Kathie Lee who “found him when he had had this heart attack.”
“Cody was home from school, and we tried to resuscitate him,” she recounted. “The EMT guys came, and they said, ‘Mrs. Gifford, we just want you to know your husband, he never suffered. He never saw the ground he fell on.'”
Frank ‘Was Ready To Go’
In the years since then, Kathie Lee has found comfort in knowing that Frank “was ready to go.”
“He was one week shy of his 85th birthday, but he was ready to go,” she said. “He said, ‘You know, hon, I’m not afraid. I’m starting to get really curious.'”
Katgie Lee, who is now a grandmother of five and is working on a documentary about her life, is focused on staying in the present these days.
“I need to find joy in the moment I’m in right now, because none of us know when is our last breath,” she concluded. “Instead of [saying], ‘One day I’m going to take that vacation, one day I’m going to do this…’, find joy right now.”
Kathie Lee has long been known as one of the only openly devout conservative Christian women in the entertainment world.
While it would be great to see Kathie Lee find romance again, we can certainly understand her desire to stay true to the love of her life. In the end, Frank was one lucky man to have a wife like her.
God bless you, Kathie Lee Gifford!