Kathie Lee Gifford Says She Was Never the Same After Husband’s Affair

Getty Kathie Lee Gifford.

Former “Today” host Kathie Lee Gifford has shared her true feelings about her late husband Frank Gifford’s highly publicized sexual affair.

Gifford gave details about how she felt during a June 3 interview with Fox News.

“First of all, I loved Frank,” Gifford told Fox News Digital. “I was [expletive] at him, believe me. And furious that he would take something as precious as our marriage into a hotel room with somebody. It was so unlike him. And he put his whole family at risk because of it. But I also knew that we had a family that we loved.”

However, she added, “I was never the same though. People take sex so casually, and it pretty much did me in for a long time. But I just went back to work, thanked everybody for their prayers and tried to avoid any newspapers for a long, long time.”

Gifford has been publicizing her new book, “I Want to Matter: Your Life Is Too Short and Too Precious to Waste.”

According to ET Online, Frank Gifford’s affair, with former flight attendant Suzen Johnson in 1997, occurred when the couple’s two kids were only 4 and 7.

Kathie Lee Gifford Says She Prayed & Decided to Save Her Marriage Because She Didn’t Want to Break Up Her Family

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Gifford attributed her faith with helping her stay in the marriage. “When you hurt, you pray,” she told Fox.

“I did it to save our marriage because I loved Frank,” she said.

“I was not going to break up our family. Nope… A man said to me once, ‘Kathie, if you can’t forgive your husband, forgive your children’s father.’ I said, ‘Well, that guy’s wonderful. That guy is a beautiful human being.’ He said, ‘Then forgive that guy.’ It worked.”

Gifford, who had two children with her husband, said, “My children’s father was a wonderful, loving, gentle, compassionate, generous, and sweet man,” she wrote. “He was easy to forgive because I knew his heart.”

“I prayed an almost impossible prayer,” she wrote in her book, according to Fox. “’Lord, please give me a deeper desire for Frank than I have ever had for him, even more than at the beginning.’ This was an epic request. I was crazy in love with Frank then, and grateful to finally have the kind of exciting, thrilling, ecstatic love I’d only known about from books or movies. To my surprise, God answered my prayer and gave me a desire for Frank, unlike anything we had ever experienced. Every time we made love, it was truly healing for me.”

Kathie Lee Gifford Describes Negativity as ‘Toxic’

Kathie Lee Gifford with her husband Frank Gifford.

Gifford also spoke to ET Online about the affair.

“I could have let the seed germinate but I don’t want to be that person, that bitter, angry, unhappy, miserable human being ‘cause you know what you end up doing? You end up making everybody around you every bit as miserable,” she said.

She told ET that negativity is “toxic.”

“We all make our choices – he made a different one than I did, and we all live with them,” Giffford said of her husband. “But I can live with the choices I have made if I have truly experienced a deep and abiding forgiveness of that person.”