Gayle King

Career

Gayle King's first job in television was as a production assistant at WJZ-TV in Baltimore, a station where Oprah Winfrey worked as an anchor. It was there the two met. After that, she trained as a reporter at WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C. She then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to work as a weekend anchor and general-assignment reporter for WDAF-TV. In 1981, King took a job as a news anchor at WFSB in Hartford, Connecticut, a position she held for 18 years.

Talk shows and morning news co-anchor

During that stretch, she lived for a time in Glastonbury, Connecticut. She also served as a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 1991, she co-hosted the NBC daytime talk show Cover to Cover with Robin Wagner, but it was canceled after just 13 weeks. A syndicated talk show of her own, The Gayle King Show, launched in 1997 but was canceled after one season because of low ratings.

She later hosted a radio version of The Gayle King Show on XM Satellite Radio, starting in September 2006. On January 3, 2011, she began hosting another show with the same name on OWN. That program ended on November 17, 2011, when King moved to CBS to co-anchor CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose and a rotating group of third co-anchors, including Norah O'Donnell for a time. The show performed well in the ratings, and King and Rose were known for their strong on-air chemistry.

They also became friends, staying close even after Rose left CBS following sexual misconduct allegations. King became an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine in 1999. Before joining CBS News, she worked as a special correspondent for Good Morning America. On November 10, 2011, she finalized a deal with CBS to co-anchor CBS This Morning, starting on January 9, 2012.

Network news

She publicly urged CBS to be fully transparent when it was revealed the network planned to keep findings of sexual abuse and harassment private. She was praised for keeping her composure during an interview with R. Kelly, who stood up, screamed, and beat his chest while discussing sexual abuse allegations. In 2018, King was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.

Personal life

Gayle King and Oprah Winfrey have been close friends since 1976. Winfrey once described King as the mother she never had, the sister everyone would want, and the friend everyone deserves. King was married to William Bumpus, a Connecticut attorney and former assistant attorney general, from 1982 until 1993.

They have two children: a daughter, Kirby, and a son, William Bumpus Jr. On February 27, 2025, King was named a passenger on Blue Origin’s eleventh New Shepard flight, alongside Katy Perry, Amanda Nguyen, Aisha Bowe, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez. The NS-31 mission launched on April 14, 2025. With that flight, King and Sánchez became the first female journalists in space and part of the first all-female crew since Valentina Tereshkova’s solo 1963 Vostok 6 mission.