Emmy Award-winning TV host Kathie Lee Gifford says God helped her forgive and heal after her late husband, Frank, was unfaithful. But the outspoken Christian admits she was “never the same,” saying the infidelity left a “scar” because she views marriage as sacred.
In her latest book—“I Want to Matter: Your Life Is Too Short and Too Precious to Waste”—Gifford, 70, explains that she was determined to keep her family together after Frank, a former NFL athlete and sports commentator, had an affair in 1997. She writes that people still thank her for staying in her marriage, which lasted 29 years, until Frank’s death in 2015.
Kathie Lee Gifford on Keeping Her Family Together
Gifford recently told Fox News Digital that she loved Frank but was “pissed at him…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.”
Through prayer and love, Gifford worked to keep her family intact. Someone advised her, “If you can’t forgive your husband, forgive your children’s father.” That approach worked, Gifford said, because Frank was “a beautiful human being.” But after he was unfaithful, Gifford no longer considered her husband “my hero,” adding, “I was never the same.”
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Society views sex “so casually,” Gifford said, but the betrayal “pretty much did me in for a long time.” Frank’s affair became like a scar, she added. “Maybe the wound’s not there anymore, but the remembrance of it is.”
Gifford credits prayer and Christian counseling with helping her forgive Frank and avoid bitterness. “My whole faith is built on the foundation of forgiveness,” she said. “Jesus died for me for the forgiveness of my sins. We cannot withhold from others what he has freely given to us.”
A specific prayer of Gifford’s—which she admitted seemed “almost impossible”—was that God would give her “a deeper desire” for her husband than ever before. “This was an epic request,” she wrote, because “I was crazy in love with Frank” when they met.
“To my surprise, God answered my prayer and gave me a desire for Frank, unlike anything we had ever experienced,” Gifford wrote. “Every time we made love, it was truly healing for me.”
Kathie Lee Gifford: ‘Trust God To Lead You Through’
Laughter returned to the family’s home, Gifford said, and their two children grew up to be “extraordinary” humans. When Cody and Cassidy eventually learned their father had been unfaithful, Gifford wrote, they knew “an even deeper truth: their parents loved them and each other enough to trust in God’s healing.”
Gifford learned that “no matter how hard things might become, it’s never too late to bring beauty from the ashes.” She also discovered that marriage and “staying in love” takes lots of work. To people undergoing “a season of great difficulty,” Gifford urges them to “trust God to lead you through.”
