'She will never replace him': Kathie Lee Gifford's devotion to late husband Frank souring her current romance
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: Kathie Lee Gifford is in a relationship with a Nashville-based businessman, Richard Spitz, after she lost her second husband, Frank Gifford, in 2015. However, it has now been said that Kathie is still not over the late football player, which results in Spitz “struggling to compete.”
Citing an insider, RadarOnline.com reported, “Frank will always be the love of Kathie Lee's life. She has made it very clear that she will never replace him. That's very difficult for any new boyfriend to hear, especially when there are still pictures of Frank all over her house.”
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‘Don’t lock yourself away’
Frank died just a few days before his 85th birthday at his Greenwich, Connecticut home. Following his death, the French-American television presenter shifted to Nashville. However, a friend said, “Everyone hoped to move to Nashville, and starting over would help Kathie Lee move on without Frank, but it hasn't.”
This comes after in 2022, Kathie shared about dating life. “Don’t lock yourself away,” the 69-year-old told Today, before explaining, “For me, it was being able to work out my grief and my sorrow creatively. I wrote the movie ‘Then Came You.’”
She also noted, “I think that is something we can be proactive about. You’ll know when you’re ready just to get out of the house and go with friends someplace. Don’t lock yourself away. Open yourself to the possibility of it.”
The actress revealed, “I went out on a couple of dates that were just disasters. I hadn’t been on a date in 33 years.’ However, Kathie eventually found the one as she added at the time, “I have a very sweet man in my life. He’s good for me, and I’m good for him. I’ve discovered that by not talking about it, it stays special.”
‘I knew the truth’
In 2020, Kathie opened up about the difficult times in her married life with Frank. “It's not a bed of roses," she told ET Online, referring to Frank's infidelity. "I mean, we struggled after that for a long time. He knew that I would never again be exactly the same as I was before I knew the truth of what he had done.”
She went on to mention, “But we stayed together, we saved our marriage, we saved -- by God's grace -- our children. I knew my children would be very, very different people if we had broken up at that time. But all these years later, I hear from people all the time who say I'm still married because of what you went through.”
Kathie also spoke of her book, ‘It's Never Too Late: Make the Next Act of Your Life the Best Act of Your Life’, and added, “I wanted to encourage people that, by sharing my own life experiences, whether painful or successful, triumphant or tragic, that these are all of the things that molded me…every one of them. And I didn't like a whole lot of them and I prayed for God to release me from so many things, but he didn't, but he got me through."
“And if there is a message in my book - and I think there are many…but I love to learn from people and if people can learn from what I've gone through and learned to keep their heart tender in spite of becoming tough, you got to be tough in this world to survive,” she added.