Gayle King explains why she broke up with ex after he asked her for a $4K loan

In a recent appearance on The Pivot Podcast, TV personality Gayle King touched on her love life and recalled a moment when she felt “crushed” after a man she was dating asked her for a $4,000 loan to settle a “child support issue” and pay for furniture.

According to ET, King, who has been best friends with Oprah Winfrey for decades, said that she and the anonymous man had been dating for probably two months when he asked for financial help.

“I went on a date. I was really excited, very excited about it,” the CBS Mornings host said. “We’d gone out maybe two months and then he said he really needed to talk to me. He wanted to have a private conversation…[he said], ‘Do you think you could lend me $4,000?’ I’m like, ‘Oh god.'”

King also said the loan request left her feeling “crushed” because the man was “somebody who was making, you know, six figures, successful.” “And when I said, you know, could I ask what it’s for? He said it was for a child support issue and to pay a payment on some furniture. [I thought] ‘Oh god, this is just getting worse.'”

The 69-year-old said that though she eventually loaned the man the money, the incident negatively impacted their relationship as her feelings for him no longer felt the same, adding that she ultimately broke things up with him.

King also touched on her best friend Winfrey‘s reaction, saying that the billionaire media mogul said, “‘God, I would have felt better if he had said $40,000.'”

Elsewhere in the interview, King touched on how her dating life was affected as her popularity grew. “What’s difficult is that people say, ‘Oh, you’re so intimidating,'” she said, per ET. “Somebody said to me once, ‘Gayle, look at your shoes … look at your bag, look at your coat. You’re friends with Oprah!’ A guy looks at that and says, ‘I can’t compete with that.'”

“But my thing is, it’s not a matter of competing. I’m not looking for someone to compete,” she explained. “You want somebody who has a sense of humor, who’s very secure, who’s not intimidated by whatever all of this is, that just sees you for you.”

King also spoke about the kind of men she’s attracted to. “I love how a Black man says ‘motherf**ker’ [and] ‘baby’… There’s something about the way a Black man says it, I’m just attracted to that,” she disclosed.

“They gotta have something else too, though. What really is most attractive to me is a sense of humor. Kindness, you always get me with kindness.”

“I like to see how they interact with other people,” she continued. “Somebody you can take to the White House and the backyard barbecue, who fits in with both and is comfortable in their own skin. Intelligence really matters to me. Proper grammar really matters to me — and somebody who can make you laugh.”

King was married to Connecticut lawyer Bill Bumpus before they divorced in 1993. There has since been little to no public detail about her love life. And though their divorce was a result of Bumpus’ infidelity, King said her ex was a “great husband” when they were together.

“He had a problem with monogamy — never good in a marriage. Infidelity, just throwing it out there, never good,” she shared.