Background and Age

Gayle King was born on December 28, 1954, in Chevy House, Maryland. Her father holds a degree in electrical engineering and her mother is a homemaker. Due to her father’s work, she spent a significant time of her life in Turkey, where she went to an American school. After her father’s retirement, her family came back to Maryland. She attended college and graduated from the University Of Maryland in 1976. She got a degree in Psychology and Sociology.

She explained to USA Today how she carved a path from college to becoming a public news figure, “I majored in psychology, so I never really intended to be on television. I’ve always liked listening to other people’s problems and giving them unsolicited advice, and so I thought I would be good in psychology, that I’d have a practice where I would listen to problems all day long. I was going to do that or law school because I thought I’d be great in front of a jury trying to argue my case or convince jurors to see things my way and putting away criminals. I was not going to represent guilty people.

So in the back of my mind, that’s what I was thinking, but I got an entry-level position at a TV station when I was in college, and then I became hooked. You’ll talk to 10 different people and get 10 different stories of how we started in this business, but for me, it was really by accident. It wasn’t something that I intended to do. I got an entry-level position and there you go to something else and then something else and something else and here I am.”

Relationships

During her line of work, Gayle met a man named Bill Bumps. They fell in love and he became her boyfriend. They got married in 1982 and currently have 2 kids. Their marriage lasted 11 years but it eventually came to a bitter end. The couple got divorced in 1993. The problems from the marriage were discussed many times on the Oprah Show.

She said on a talk show with Will Smith that she left the line of communication open for her ex-husband just for the sake of their children. She wanted nothing to do with her ex-husband but she felt that it was right to allow her children to see him.