There’s one new book release Kathie Lee Gifford won’t have on her bedside table.
The former morning talk show host told Good Day New York she has zero plans to read Kelly Ripa’s new autobiographical book, “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories,” including pages about their old mutual co-host, Regis Philbin.
“I’m not gonna read the book. I haven’t read it. I don’t even know if it’s out yet,” Gifford said on the NYC morning show. “I just know what Regis was to me. He was, for 15 years, the best partner a person could ever, ever have professionally, but he was my friend.”
Gifford continued, “We were dear friend and after I left the show, for the next 20 years, we became better friends. I saw him two weeks before he died and the minute I found out he had passed, I got in my car and drove to their house.”
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Ripa’s book has made headlines recently as she detailed some less than ideal working conditions with Philbin, after she took over for Gifford. Ripa has said she wants people to know working with Philibin “was not a cakewalk.”
Gifford said she was “sorry” to read the headlines about Ripa’s book.
“In all the years I knew him, I never saw him unkind to anyone. I never did. If he liked you, he teased you,” Gifford recounted.
She also hoped the press concerning Philbin wouldn’t make its way back to his remaining family. She said her first thought was “Lord, protect his wife and the girls from this.”
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In the press run up for her book, which came out last month Ripa also said of Regis, “I loved him, and I still do.”
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