Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig FergusonOn this week’s episode, Craig talks to his friend of many years - Kathie Lee Gifford - an American legend who needs no introduction. Kathie highlights her views on Jesus, faith, and shares several Regis Philbin stories. This is part 2 of a two-part interview. enJOY!
Hello, This is Craig Ferguson, letting y'all know that I am still out on the road with my Fancy Rascal tour this week in the following beautiful places. October tenth at the Magoffin Auditorium in El Paso, Texas. October the eleventh at the Wagner Noelle Performing Arts Center in Midland, Texas. And October thirteenth to the fifteenth at the Houston Improv Comedy Club in Houston, Texas. I promise I will not mess with Texas, or I might. I can't make a commitment at this point. For a fullest of dates, please go to my website, the Craig Fergusons Show dot com slash tour. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. Welcome to Kathy Lee Gifford Part two. Kathy Lee Gifford is so bonkers and so interesting that we had to give her a two parts. The second bit, yeah, are you up and running?
Okay? Noise with this, so that's all right. Look, if people know that you.
Sometimes have a beverage, yes that has ice in it. And a little straw, which I think is that it's not the most European way of drinking wine.
I've ever seen.
But I think that you're not European. It's okay, I am.
I was born in France. That's born in Paris, France.
You're a French Messianic Jew. Yes, I think you're it.
I think I'm maybe the only one. Wow.
Yes, And so I now have been up since I literally got up this morning at twelve forty five, and I said, even for me, that's early that it is now one o'clock in the afternoon here, and so I'm having a little glass of white wine.
I'm not judging. You can't.
No, you never have, but so people know, with a little bit of ice in it. I usually have episoda with it too, you know, so that I can spritzer.
Spritzer a spritzer.
It's just fine.
Listen.
When we talked before, yes, we talked a lot about religion. And I know you can talk a lot about that and look to be honest, I love you, but you can talk a lot about pretty much anathing. So we talked a lot about religion. I want to talk to you a little bit about when I first met you and where you were. I remember the first meeting I ever had with you, and I don't know if you remember.
That was it the Drew Carey Show.
Was at the Drew Carey Show. And I was eighth banana on that show. My first child had just been born.
So that was twenty two years ago. Twenty two years ago, and you I was just doing a guest starring. You were guest starring. It was right, you were still doing.
Regious Is it regu It would still be reading it was mid nineties, No.
It was I left Regis in two thousand.
Right, so we hadn't just been born.
He was about to be born, okay, because it was mid nineties or late nineties or two thousand, even he was born in two thousand.
Okay, that's the year I did leave Regis, all right, not personally, you know.
It remained my dear, dear, dear friend thirty more years. Yes, I love you. Yeah, I just left the show, right, But you were so kind to me.
You were a big, big, this big star coming in and do a spot on the on the show, and I was eighth banana on the show, and you gave me some kids books for my.
Who was not born.
Yeah, for your like, here's so you get them, Marrily, You're like coca cola.
You get Coca cola is not necessarily good for you. What I got, what I've got good for you.
You said that before, and I just I remember thinking at the time, Wow, that.
Is a class act. That is a class act.
And I haven't changed my opinion one iota since then about that.
We've been in bed together for for for entertainment, for entertainment. That's right, It's available on Netflix.
Then came you, everybody.
I don't know why I'm plugging it. I don't get resid juels. You get them, No, I don't. All right, Okay, So here's the thing though. But you were at that time with Regis, yes, professionally, and you were with Frank matrimonially yes at the time. Yes, And I want to talk to you a little bit about the man because.
Regis, Regis and Frank.
But let's talk a little because you are and I mean this in a very complimentary and in no way the judgmental or anything, but you are a very heterosexual woman. Oh yes, and you're a vibrant, funny, sexy woman.
Now, yeah, tell me, well, it's the truth.
Thank you.
So I think to myself, well, professionally, you're working with Regis and you're with this.
God of an athlete Frank.
Yes, as well.
How did you meet Frank?
I met Frank early, early, early in nineteen eighty two when I just signed for a year long that was it stint on the Good Morning America and they were grooming me to take over for John London. But I would certainly not aournalists. But they said, we're not interested in a journalist. We want somebody. Then it was under the auspices of ABC Entertainment, not News, so they weren't necessarily looking for a journalist. They were looking for somebody that would be comfortable on camera and could talk to a rock and make the rock laugh in some instances, you know, And that's I don't know that you can learn that. That's something that's sort of innate. Comes from I'm sorry, Every good and perfect gift scripture says comes from above, from the Father of the heavenly realms, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Right, So.
Again, yes, everything goes back to him.
So where to come from?
I went to Bora Roberts University to be a drama what is I don't it's been so many year. It was a drama measure with a music minor and it was just it was a it was a waste of time, yes, but I was the only Jew there and the only one who didn't speak in tongues, so it was it was problematic for me. Yeah, and back then, back then, yeah, I was the only one with the maiden name of Epstein. Let's put it that way. And it was what they call a charismatic Pentecostal university. No, it wasn't that kind. It wasn't that extreme, but it was you know, gifts of the Holy Spirit, which I do believe in, is just not one that I have. I've prayed for the gifts of the spirit to speak in tongues, and God said that the tongue I've given you is enough.
It's doing fine. I don't know.
I don't think the world can take many more languages that I see. Anyway, I learned to to sort of just accept things like that along the way. I didn't want to feel less then because I didn't have that gift. God said, concentrate on the ones I've given you. You know, so many people in our world are miserable because well, why didn't I don't have what they have?
How come you didn't give me that? Lord?
How come I don't My thighs don't look like whatever? It is? The pault In Philippi, all of his books in the New Testament, talks so much about the fact that we The whole idea of walking with Jesus is learning to be content in the moment.
I totally agree with that. Gratitude is a silver bullet.
Gratitude is the way every time, and you can militate, you can find some That gratitude is wait.
Exactly, instead of bitching and moaning about what you don't have and missing out on all the blessing that's.
Sitting right there. I tricked, you're going to talk to me about how you met Frank. Yes, thank you.
So anyway, back then I was doing commercials too, like they used to do on the Today Show with the David Garrison was that his name, early early days where they stopped the show and then they do a dog commercial or really I don't remember that. Yeah, the early days of the Today Show were like that. So they were still doing that. So I had to do a basset hound a commercial with a basset hound at four in the morning, right, And it was for Alpo. So I came in, got my hair and makeup. Yes, it's a very glamorous business.
You're a tireless per.
It was four o'clock and I already had full hair and makeup and I'm ready to shoot with a Mellie Bassett hound and do an Apple commercial. So I'm walking down along very lonely stairwell, not a stairwell, but at hall because nobody's there hardly, right, And I look over to the left of me, and there's the greatest set of buns I have ever seen in my life, leaning over a sink, obviously putting in contact lenses. I have no idea who the buns belonged to, but they got my attention.
So you're saying to me that it was Frank Gifford's ass was the first thing that you went this is very interesting.
To It was beautiful. I am a beauty lover, you know, I mean, I can appreciate. Can I tell you the last day of his life? The man said the same ass. It's unbelievable. Wow, that's why he was one of the great tight ends of all time.
Okay, So frankly contact lenses in with his great ass, and what happens?
You're like, hey, sailor, got a cigarette for a girl?
No, No, I just immediately said what comes to my mind, usually without any filter at all, and I said, have I got an operation for you? Because I had just had an operation called radial caratotomy, which was a precursor to lasik.
Oh.
Yeah, that's when they cut the surface of your cornea with a razor blade.
Yeah. I got that done, yes, before it was lasik.
No, only a thousand people in all of America had it done at that time, right, But I knew six of them, and they had perfect eyesight, and went, I'm doing that. So I just had that operation and I went from twenty four hundred in each eye. I was I was legally blind, So I got it, and I went to twenty twenty in both eyes. It was just and so I said, have I got an operation for you? And from the face that's in the sink, I hear yeah, with a fool on either end, an operation with a fool on either end. And I went, well, well, well aren't we see this earlier?
Yeah.
I didn't recognize the voice at first, and he had such an iconic.
Voice as well, from the wide white world.
Yes, and from well wide white world sports at that time and Monday night football.
It was very big. Oh yeah, still pretty I think he's still pretty big. He was. He was on it for third twenty eight years.
Yeah, he had two unbelievable careers in football and then in broadcasting.
He was.
He blazed a trail for everything. He's got an amazing book called The Glory Game, and he wrote quite a few books about his start in the you know when he used dog food and his father was an itinerant oil, and how grateful he was for everything in.
Football, basically football at the time.
My family was I had a father and a brother who were big Baltimore, Baltimore Colts fans because I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, and we hated the Giants, so they did. I didn't hate them, but they were then that game, that Glory Game, that the nineteen fifty eight I think championship game was between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. Right, So I was aware of football, of course, but I was I've never been a maniac about it, right, And I like sports, but I don't live for them, all right, so you know who Frank has because everybody in the whole world knew who Frank Gifford was. And I'd heard scuttle butt around the studio that he was, you know, in a very unhappy marriage and everybody adored him. But she was, you know, not a very nice lady. And why in the world did he marry her a kind of thing. And it was his second wife, and you know, there's who's already had children and everything. He's twenty three years older than me, right, so and so there was there was Later I started working as host whenever John London wasn't there, and he would be there whenever David Hartman wasn't there. So we started to work actually together a little bit on the days when nobody else wanted to be there. Nobody was watching at home, so we were the b team and we just became friends. And he you know, you were friends first, oh, for four years, really four years we were friends. His marriage eventually was on the rocks, and he was in the process of divorce to his second wife, and and and he just he was like my champion. He would call the producers and say I'm watching the show. Why is Kathy's seat down so low? Why change?
I know? Joan?
Joan was taller than I was, and so her seat was set at a perfect at a certain and I'd sit down next to David Hartman, I'd look like a muppet, you know. And so he cared about things like that.
Right, it sounds patty, but actually matters in that world.
Oh it does. It's it's it's perception. What is that little person? It takes your your mind off what you should You should be listening to what somebody's saying, you know. And so we just started having lunch together, started having dinner together. Every time there was something that happened in his life that was really traumatic, he would call me and he'd said, Kath, can I take you to lunch? Can I will you go to dinner with me? My brother's dying of you know whatever.
This just happened.
I just saved a guy's life on a private plane and was going down and the pilot had had a heart attack. Tell me, yeah, well he back then he was private planes all the time. He was working for an Abisco and NBC ABC, and so they flew privately lots of places to games and things like that. One day he was on the Nabisco plane I believe it was. And it was just a you know, a small jet with maybe seat six people and had a pilot and a co pilot right and all of a sudden it was going along and all of a sudden co pilot comes back. They felt a jerk co pilot because Frank, Frank, hurry, come up, come in front, helped me out, helped me out. Frank just got out of his seat. It's a coach, put me in. He goes up there and the very very overweight captain had had a massive heart attack and his girth was on all the all the He's leaning on the leaning on everything, leaning on everything. And so Frank frantically tries to get the man back off the controls and save his life if he can. Right back then, back then we thought that that could help with you do the mouth's mouth and no, then it's really just the compression. Apparently they don't do that anymore. I don't know why. That's if you're choking, But I don't know. I'm not a doctor. Don't believe anything I say.
I'm not expecting you to the people. I'm talking to the listeners at all. I know you don't believe anything.
I believe a lot of things you said, but I don't take medical advice from you. It's okay you drink waning with ice cubes and a straw.
It's not there, believe you.
So that straw, by the way, So I don't leave lip marks like I did before on the on the beautiful.
I've told you before. You do not need to get defensive about it. It's I think it's totally fine.
So listen.
So it happened the plane and his mouth was bloodied from trying to save this man's life. That's the man that comes home traumatized and calls me and goes, Kathy, can we can?
But I need to know that the pilot he died.
He died, he died, And so the co pilot lands a plane with this dead guy next to him.
And then and the two days later, Frank speaks at his funeral and he called you.
When he landed.
Yeah.
Yeah, So I guess that's there's your answer.
I was his best friend, Yeah, his best female friend. He had a lot of real good you know.
I can imagine Frank get her that good mail buddies.
Oh he had great good mailk brud, but he had everybody loved Frank. Frank didn't love everybody else. He could not tolerate assholes. Pardon my French, but that was his word for it. Yeah, he knew that his days were coming to an end at a certain point. And he goes, Kath, I don't want a funeral. I don't want to be in a box. I want to be cremated. I said, they're still in a box. He goes, I don't know. I just don't like him kind of rotting in a box me either. I want to be cremated too, because I'm not going to be there.
I'm not going to I want to be in a Viking loan ship. Yeah, sand out to sea and then say it on fire.
That's a lot sexier than just so you do eventually want to be cremated.
Yeah, but in a Viking long ship with arrows fired by my sons.
Is that what they used to do?
That was so my sons are on the shore and they've got flaming arrows, and I get pushed out to the sea and then the fire, the fire. I'm on this thing on the Viking long ship, and the flaming arrows hit the hit the boat and then I, you know, I burn up and go into the ether and the boat goes there.
Not probably good for the environment, but the sexiest hell bye bye.
You know, sometimes you just gotta carbon footprint your way out of here.
So can I give your eulogy? Yeah? Yeah, he was the greatest of us.
I would talk about the time my thood dropped.
Say that word. That is such a naughty word to me.
We're not in Scotland to play in Scotland, I don't know.
I don't think they love me very much over there.
But then they're foolish. Oh god, I'll go over and I'll I'll I tell them what to say and what to think.
This is an official invitation to the Fancy Vascal stand up Show. I Craig Ferguson will be performing this fall in your region. You can buy tickets and check out the full list of dates at the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash sure see you.
There or not.
We're talking about you and Frank. So you and Frank are friends for four years. So when did you realize you're falling in love with him?
Then you know what it was around June. It was before the US Open maybe end of May, and I had broken up with this guy I'd been going with for a couple of years. Frank couldn't stand him because Frank said, Kathy, that guy's not.
In love with you.
He's in love with him, so he's working the room.
He's not he's not in love with you.
And he said, please tell me you're not going to marry this guy, Like, well, I might, you know, I mean, come on, you don't.
I don't tell you who to marry. And he was. He was by then. His divorce was like almost final. I love that. This is all the makings of like Nora Efron comedy. And it was amazing.
And the life we had together was because our worlds collided and yet meshed perfectly. He was sports, he was politics. His daughter was married to Kennedy.
He knew all of them.
He knew that am G and Conna, he knew everybody.
Okay, that's not really politics, Kathy, that's no what I'm saying. The other world.
It was a mafia. It was politics, it was it was everything.
Because that's scary.
No, his daughter was married to Bobby and Ethel's son Michael who died tragically in that aspens Ski accident. So I mean, that's a whole other discussion for it. Is there more wine?
Yeah, we're going to talk about the Kennedy's. We're going to need a couple of bottles.
Anyway.
So, right, the joy of your marriage to Frank, because that's really what I'm going to zero and then on because I.
Wanted to know when I knew.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
What happened is that I broke up with this guy and he says, you know what, you I'm sick of this. So this is the eleventh time or ninth time or something. He said, You're going to hang out with me until you're over this guy, Kathy, because you keep going back to him and it's bad news and it's just a bad habit. I'm going to help you break a bad habit.
It supposed to be like Frank you then.
Well, Frank was had been in love with me, home me for a long time. Yeah, but he because literally we're twenty three years apart by the same birthday.
Yeah, that's right, August sixteenth, right, Yes, because my wife's birthday too.
That's exactly right.
A Madonna Yep. And Hitler too is Hitler? No, Okay, I just threw that in.
Mangola.
Yeah, okay. So so anyway he did.
He started taking We were just we were already friends, and we were every time there was a party or there was something that we were invited to as in the company, and he'd take me. One day, they were having a big, big party for the guy out in Los Angeles I forget his last name, big, big, big billionaire, and it was a party we were all invited to. And we were on the phone and I.
Said, are we going to go? Can? Are you going to take me?
He says, no, I'm gonna I'm going to be out. I've got got to be in Florida, got to be in Santa Fe. Well that's where he was seeing two different women at the time. Yeah, not that he was. It was just that's was his world. Don Meredith lived in Santa Fe and he was went out to see him, and then there was and that It doesn't matter. The point is I said, okay, well then I'm going to go with somebody, somebody tall, dark and handsome. Then okay, call me when you get home.
You know.
About fifteen minutes later, the phone rings, he goes, I'm going to take it to the party, and I said, oh great, because there was literally I'd never let myself my mind go there, because first of all, I didn't know that he loved me, and he was always such a gentleman. It was never oh that's not true. One time, okay, one time after we had a he called me because something horrendous had happened to his life. We went to a place called Santa Fe in New York. It was not near where we lived. It's a Mexican restaurant, and we had a lot of Margarita's and chips, and it was just, you know, he just was telling me everything and was just in a dry He walks me back to my brownstone, now I remember, and at my door, like a gentleman, he gives me a kiss. Well, I swooned. I had that it was that great of a kiss, and I later threw up. So I don't really know.
This is Margharita's. You're kissing the love of your life, the love.
Of my life. But that was a year later that we started to see each other. That was just one of those things that happened, and we laughed about it everywhere.
Oh, really so like you made a kind of a little bit that kiss, a good night, friendly smooch that went away, a rogue kiss. Listen, God, I love you, but I don't think this will stand up in core. I think you made with no I swear.
Are you sure I made up for this?
Trust me? But no.
It was one kiss, one kiss at the door and I and I literally it took my breath away and I got in my door, and maybe an hour or so later I did because I didn't eat. I just was drinking Margarita's. And I've only thrown up three times in my life that I can remember. That was one of them. That's why I'm remember this now.
I feel like I have to ask what the other two? I don't know. Why do you want to talk about it? I can't even remember the other two.
But it's not I'm not one of those people that has a bad stomach, right, you know. And I don't get migrains or stuff like that. I just don't any who, it's not me, Thank you Jesus. Anyway, stop it. You're throwing me off.
Sorry, I'm so frank.
That night at the party, right he shows up at my sing alleged Brownstone, aforementioned Dstone. And he gives me this box and I go, what's that? And I open it up and it's this watch.
Oh wow, that's fancy.
It's a rolexe for people who can't see it is And as you can see, it's a very a unique one because that has a brown face, right, you know, usually they're they're not that color right. And I looked at him.
I don't know much about your fancy watches.
No me either, And I said, why here are you giving me this is I think it was seven thousand dollars at the time. And the man who's been my friend for four years and there's nothing between us except we're going to a party. I said why and he goes, because it's the color of your eyes.
Wow. Okay, so that's it. Then from there on.
You know what. That night I was just I couldn't wear it because it was so big on me. I've got the I've got the scrawniest.
Little you know I got to be to take a look at mine. I have the you have small. I have girlish wrists too. It's the curse of the Ferguson man. That's why we were never I heard further south. No, no, no, no, that you're getting all wrong. It's made up for further suck. That's why all all the grizzle and blood is out of the the veins around the wrist and it goes elsewhere. This is very rude and it's not at all what I was looking for, is what I was hoping for.
So so that night we we we slow danced at this party and it was like a real real slow dance, right, you know, And I was I've never been that so close to him, like really in his arms and looking into his eyes and I but still it wasn't I was an love. I was just thinking, what is this, what's going on? And he's still kept coming taking me out, and so I wouldn't go back to the other guy and all of that. And then one night I had just bought a little place in the Hamptons and he used to come out every weekend to visit his his attorney had a home out there, and he'd just stay there and just go to all the parties. It was during the US Open, I remember that, and he said, let's let me you drop me off. He used to pick to drive up to the studio a West sixty seventh Street, ABC, where I'd finish the show with Regis and he'd have this burgundy Jaguar and he'd be waiting for me. I'd get in the burgundy Jaguar and he'd drive me to the Hampton's. We'd have lunch at my little house in the woods, and he'd go to the attorney's house and then whatever parties, whatever was going on, he would come and pick me up when we go, and it was just lovely because I wasn't going to go all these places, and he knows everybody. You can imagine the whole golf world, it's right, right, I mean, it's hard for anybody to understand.
What he was.
He would be huge the rad pit today, or he would be Kevin Coustner today, or who's Tom Brady?
Okay, because yeah, right, right right. So you were as Joselle.
Then hardly no, but I was. I was starting to become very by that time.
Was pretty no.
I was just started with Regis in ninety five.
Yeah, no, eighty.
Five, you've been doing for eighty five, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, long story short.
Just ten years off.
I get now, I get, I just I can remember everything with my children what year it was and what you know. But with my own life, I just have to go Now where was I?
Who was I with?
Oh?
Yes?
So that night there's a big party in Southampton and he picks me up and and as usual, and we get to the door and it's full of people, and he goes, listen, there's a few people I need to say hello to and I'll.
Be right back.
I said, okay, we're not dating, we're not going, you know. And five minutes later he's back and he stands there. He goes, Okay, now I've done I've done my duty and now.
I've come home.
Oh, and I went what So a little bit later, they had something that was a precursor This is how long ago. This was a precursor to karaoke, with something called the music box.
Okay, and so a guy comes around with an orchestra.
No, it's a little machine that is like a cassette player and it'll play a song for you and you get to sing to the song.
It's an orchestration. I can begin to see where you fit in here.
This is a funny this I have actually in my safe at home in Connecticut. Still the moment I knew, and it was yes, And because it would record you singing the song together, so you would have it for infamy, right right, Yeah. So we sang a couple of songs, and the song that we kept doing over and over and over again was you don't bring me flowers, you don't sing me love songs. And I've been a singer all my life, so I sang it better even that. But Frank, I'd never met it anybody in my life who could sing in tune but not in rhythm. So I'd sing you don't fine love songs. He'd goes you hard to talk to me and louren to come to the door at the end of the day. And I thought it was a joke. I said, what what is that? He goes that's I said, can we try this again? And I go, you don't.
You hard to talk to me? And Moore, you come to the door at the end of the day.
If you could hear this, Craig, I will play it for you one time when you come to my house in Connecticut. I fell off the sofa, laughing my ass off. That's the best he could do. They really could not do it.
He can't do him. I remember laughing so.
Hard and falling off and laughing and looking up at him and he's pulling me up, and I remember thinking, I never want to have one day of my life when that man's not in it with me.
That's great. And that was it.
We were together from that moment on until I found him, you know, with a smile on his face, like we talked about the first time we were talking on your podcast. You know, I found him gone to a better.
Place, and you truly and you you believe that. I don't believe it, I know it. That's great.
Yeah, let me talk to about another man in your life that I did know. I didn't know Frank sadly, but I did know Regius very well.
Uh huh. And he was to me, well how.
He was to me, we'll talk about it in a bit, but how he was to you because he was a remarkable talent.
Regis, wasn't he.
I've never known you come closest, You come closest to every man that that except you. I love him dearly, But he was he was not this. It wasn't my type, Regis. No, well no, it was definitely chemistry there, but it.
Was, Yes, it was. We laughed about it. Yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't like somebody I lust it after, like you you know, let's be honest, me and the rest of the world. But I know my place, Magan. But anyway, I don't know what you're doing with that. He knows it's playtime. So anyway, I was a huge fan of his before I met.
Him, right, So yeah, it's an interesting thing, readers, because he was different to the way he was on TV.
That's what I'm thinking about.
Oh see, I knew him from being living out in Los Angeles and watching him on AM Los Angeles, right, And I used to I use every time I turn as, I love that guy. He's he's a goofball, but he's really sharp and anything he could tell, and he he was willing to be a fool to get the laugh. And so when I went to Good Morning America a few years later, Regis had left the LA and was living in New York by this time doing something called The Morning Show. And I was not happy at Good Morning America. It was way too scripted, it was way too corporate. It was not a place for someone like myself.
Who I'm familiar with that kind of thing.
Yes, you know, I just couldn't play the corporate game. I couldn't be told what to say and and how to say it.
I mean I was.
I was already an a polished entertainer from fifteen years as a singer and an actress before I went to New York. And so you know, to tell me now, yeah, maybe tell me help me.
Read a que card.
No, not a cute card, but yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, there was the car I remember when I started in Late Night. He used to give him the rot me to.
Commercials and all that inner stuff. You got it, you got to. But you learn that if you're smart in five minutes. I'm sorry, you just do. But it's the essence of who you are when you're on the air and what you bring to it. And it's such a such an interesting medium because it's there'd never been anything like it before there was television, the movies were bigger in life, and and all of a sudden, there's an intimacy about television and everything else. Nobody talked to the camera and talk to the people at home and connected with them as well as Regis did, and tell a story. And he could go back and forth from the person he's supposedly telling the story, but then he'd make it a fourth wall thing and he'd break the fourth wall and say, you know, I'm you could believe this story. And I he was brilliant, brilliant at it. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, that guy has so much fun. I wasn't having any fun in Good Morning America.
I was. I dreaded it? Were you? Was that in La Good Morning in America?
No, that was New York. That's where I met Frank. When I moved to New York to do Good Morning America, That's when I met the Buns. Yes, yes, the famous buns. So anyway, yeah, so his her name was Anne Abernathy, I'm remembering now. She was his co host and she was leaving to get married, and she was leaving the show, and I called up my agent and I said, I want to try out for that show with Regis.
And he goes, but.
It's it's a it's a why He said, it's it's a local show, And I said, because it has fun every time, and I respect. I think if I could just be with him, I would love my life again. I don't care about being an international show I'd already done name that tune, I'd already done a sitcom. You know, I just wanted my personal life was always very important to me.
I feel it was more important than my career. Yeah, life, right then, Your career is just it's final.
Take care of it, exactly, exactly. So I my everybody said no, no, no, no, no, one day you'll love this story. I was sitting at La Cirque, Remember that restaurant in New York. Yeah, fancy, fancy schmancy. And so there's Barbara Walters and it's in the newspapers now because I did a couple of tryouts on it, and there was a lot of a lot of inner inner business biz buzz about me maybe becoming the new.
Coast of that.
Well with Barbara no view, it would be me and me just on the on the on the morning show. I was going to leave the national show for the local one, which is not the way most people, you know, think is a step up. So I was sitting in La Cirque and I get this, this is the finger the finger, well it's not the middle one, but it's the index fingers gum hither more than a come hither. It was a get over by one and only Barbara Walters. So I we all obeyed the queen at that time, and so I walk over to her, and she's been very nice to me, very very respectful. It's just Kathy, what is this I'm hearing about you joining Regis on the Morning Show? And I said, I don't know, Barbara, everybody's telling me I shouldn't because it's a local show. And she looked at me, and this truly made a difference in my life. She looked at me and she said, sweetheart, Toledo is local.
This is New York.
Ye. She said, you join Regis and the magic of the two of you together, if it works, you will not be a local show long.
That's amazingly. Yeah, she's a woman, a great vision. She was even then. I mean, like, right at the beginning.
Of her career, is she or are there mentors for you?
That?
Was she one of them?
Or not?
Really?
I didn't have a mentor. I had examples of what I wanted to be.
Yeah, I was going to say, because you're not someone who, with the exception of Jesus, I don't see you following people that much.
It's not kind of in you.
Yeah.
No, it isn't.
I've had people that have impressed me so much with the where they live their life and and there and other people their artistry. That's the kind of stuff that's always impacted me. I mean, I heard Barbara Streisand saying the first time, and I was gone. I said, that's what I want to do. I want I'll never have a voice like hers, but I want to I want to impact people the way she just did.
So Regius.
When I started in Late Night, there were three guys that I.
Wanted to study. One was light, one was Howard Stern.
We talk about because Howard can talk to anyone, it's just unbelievable.
And the other one was Regis. Yes.
Now, Regis was friends with Peter Lesally, who was the man who gave me the.
Job from the Today Show, from the Tonight Show.
Tonight Show like Johnny Carson's producer and Regis Uh. I said, do you think I could have lunch with Regis? And peterre said yeah, but you'll have to pay.
Through the nose. Did he add through the news?
I had no idea.
Did he say for all time? Because that's exactly right.
Yeah, just because regis as generous as a human being as he was, and he was, Yes, he had give you everything.
By he really hated to pack up the check.
I'm telling you.
You know why.
I'll tell you why. He had an Italian mother, yeah, and an Irish father. And his mother used to say to him, Listen, mister spotting like a nine candidate to do Italian. Listen, mister spar smart pants, that poor house is right around the corner. Now, don't write into me about my lousy Italian. Yeah, but she had a very thick Italian. Listen, mister smarty pants, that the poor house is right around the corner. And Richard, not Richard, that's another person in my life. And Regius Richard doesn't like it when I call him Regis.
I don't think any man in your life would like to be called He just laughs.
I said, old habits hard, right, and anyway, so he, uh, Regis was if somebody else was going to pick it up, he'd be happy to have you do it. I think he picked up the check maybe three times in the thirty years we were friends.
I you know what, Frank wouldn't let anybody pick up them, right, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean I kind of gah a bit like that as well. I mean, I'll put myself in the poor house picking up the check exactly. Yeah, I know, I think that. You know, it's the funny thing about when you mentioned it. But the private plane thing. Yeah, right. The first time I went on a private plane was coming back I had just done Letterman and his lawyer Fred and I grew up, was going, uh Los Angeles, and he said, we're taking a company plane. You didn't come with us because I was working for how many So I get on this private plane.
There's nothing like it. I'm sorry, fantastic. I mean, I know it's bad for the environment, but boy.
Tell that to Leonardo DiCaprio and John Kerry. Yeah, but bump drop the mic. Go ahead, so I said to Regis.
A couple of months later, Regis was in in Los Angeles and he was doing my late night show and I said to him during the commercial.
Break, he was like, I'm so tired. I got to get on the plane. I got to go to lax and get on the plane. I was like, reageous. You got money. I didn't know at the time.
Regis like, just you got money, where are we gonna wait?
You rent a plane? Just ren a god. Then it really was expensive and not like it is now.
Yeah, I mean it's always been expensive, but it was like, but we just said money. I said, we just you could get a plane. You could probably do that. And he said, first of all, the colored dreamed from his boy, the idea I was spending amount of money. And then and then he said, he said, but how is everyone going.
To get to see Regis christ?
Right? He loved people and he would walk through the airport and everyone would say Hi, Regious.
He loved it. He lived for it.
And I really do think he died from a broken heart.
Oh really was this show? Yes?
Because I saw him two weeks before he died. He came to my house for lunch. By that time, he enjoyed had moved to California. I still had my home. We'd we'd been neighbors in Greenwich for quite a few years, so we'd played tennis all the time together. We'd play, have lunch, you know, and go out to all our favorite restaurants here and Regius, even if you thought you were going to have a quiet little lunch with him or dinner or something like that, he'd walk in and he go, that's right, Regius is here. I'd say, look and look who I want. The woman can't live without me, And then he dragged me to every table with him too. I always ate something before I went to lunch or dinner with Regis because I knew that I would by the time we'd sit down and I could order something, I would be, you know, starved.
Right, because he's done twenty five minutes, half an hour with every table, every table.
And that's that's what was his magic. That's why he was beloved. That there are people that that respect you, that that he was beloved because that was truly truly him, and some people, I guess found that obnoxious. Nobody I ever met did. So anyway, he comes to my house two weeks before he passes, and I knew when I saw him I have a courtyard there. And when I saw him get out of they're bringing a wedding present to cast. So it's like two and a half years ago, and the minute he got out of the car, I said, oh, this is.
Gonna be the last time I see it.
Really, I knew I hadn't seen him since he'd given me an award after something.
I remember that.
Yeah, his hair and white This was in August, and he'd given me award in January at in Los Angeles, and he had he was supposed to call me up to get my award. I'll never this is when I knew that things were not going well. We left about it for the longest time, but he said, and so let's just bring her up now. And I could tell he was searching.
Here she is.
Kathy Lee Griffin, okay, And I stood up and just went, it's Gifford And it was hysterically funny and it was vintage US, you know. But that was the next time I'd seen it was almost eight months later because we lived part So he came in and we just picked up right where like you and I, Yeah, we just pick up right where we are.
Then it's still gone.
And if you needed me, you know, I would get on a plane to start it in a second.
I just don't.
Those are the greatest those You're not required to do anything. Just love me, be there if I really need you. That's it. So anyway, he's got to the point that night everything was like right right, Joy, when was it?
When was it?
And we started laughing about some stuff and and then Joy says Regis, Tell Kathy, Tell Kathy what you said to me this morning? What I say, Joy? And he goes, you know, you know about because I said to Regis, you still got the greatest head of hair. I a would say that to you too. I just admire men with hair. You can be bald and I can still like you, but I love a good head of hair.
I'll take it.
Yes, So I said, we just.
Still look at you. Your hair is beautiful.
He goes, it is. He just lit up, and she goes, tell her what you just said this morning? He'd said to her that morning, Joy, we're going over to South this morning, right, we're gonna we're gonna see Kath. And Joy said, yes, we're gonna have lunch, honey. And he goes, okay, well I don't like my hair. You gotta wash my hair for you. Gotta do my hair. I got to look good for Kat.
Wow.
And so the first thing I say is look at your hair, you know. So you know, it was just that's the people that't you just know each other. You've come to love and respect and just enjoy each other's company so much. So we left our asses off. And two two weeks later he's gone, and I went to their house close by, and they were joy and the daughters were going through a lot of his memorabilia and stuff like that had.
Everything. It was a museum. You have that standee of Dean Martin.
Everybody Dean Martin. And she said, Kathy, I just want you to know, as I was leader, she said, the last time I heard Regis laugh was with you.
That's nice.
And I just thought, I'm gonna cherish. I'm going to cherish that because we My goal every single morning for fifteen years on the air with him, and I never had a sick day once. I never missed a day vacation, but I'm you know, I never in fifteen years. My goal was to get him to laugh within five seconds. Yeah, and I rarely didn't.
He was very satisfying man to make laugh.
Oh my gosh, you would just enjoy any you know. He I cherished the fifteen years we had together. They were golden years. Television's not.
They were amazing. I was so blessed.
And then and I went on to do good television again also a little bit. We had some fun. We we created a whole different genre too. But nobody in my entire career. Have I been more explosive with on the air than with mister Craig Fergus.
Oh that's a heck of a thing, that is the truth.
We had to have a little delay, as I recall our in our broadcast, because we could be doing we could be naughty.
I think that's more to do with my unprofessionalism than no.
We just were comfortable around each other and we would forget that there were cameras rolling up.
Do you, Regis introduce me to Don Rerickles.
Oh, one of the great comic geniuses ever.
Unbelievable.
Yes, So I'm on this I Regis is in Peter le Sally's office.
I've just started.
Everybody was hanging out.
Oh yeah, Sally was let's whear it where show business is central, That's where it all went. So I'm in Peter le Sally's office. I can't believe I'm I'm with Sally. He's you know, he's a legendary. Oh, he's just amazing person. And everything I got in late night was from this guy. And so I'm in Peter's office and Regis is here, and he said, you know, I'm on the phone with Rickles. You should talk to Wrickles. I'm like, Don Rickles is going to talk to me on the phone. I'll talk to you. Gotta you gotta show on TV. He'll talk to you. So I get on the phone Wrecks and I don't know what to say. So I say to Don Reckles and mister Rickles, would you come on my show? And he said, he went, well, let's wait to see if you're head first.
If you're a hit, I'll coming on the show. But I'm not coming on some loser.
I waste my time.
Like we became friends. My wife and I, Megan and I became friends with him and Barbara. He can't he comes to a party in my house, Rackles, I can't believe, Like I'm having this Christmas party.
You're in New York, so you're not at the party. We weren't great friends.
So he turns up at the party with Barbara everybody that you know. There's this pack full of la people that you are hit by. Then by then I'm a hit.
Yeah. He comes over to me.
He gives me a bunch of single dollars and he says, here, get a better house. I was in the hills, but it was he didn't like the fact that he had to walk all through from this car and it was too much, too many.
Stairs, there was too much effort.
Yeah, and he was not sure it was worth it, but it was brilliant to me.
Is you know we're meant to be talking about joy, the joy of not just joy, Philbin, but also the joy of show business.
Essence of joy. You know.
The joy of show business, I think is the idea that you can go from watching someone like Recles when you were a kid, or seeing Kathy and Regius or Regis and Kathy as it.
Was I believe on TV, and then you meet these people.
This happened to me with Robin Williams, and you know, it's like you meet people and they become friends.
And they're real.
You pinch yourself at first, and then you just realize, no, they're They're so human and I'm loving And the times that are hard are not like what you and I are discussing is when the person that you really admire turns out to be not a very nice p Yeah, that that happens, you know, that that happens once. I look for the best in everybody, but that once in a while, every now and again, so I've always thought every time my guy go out and said, if this is the first time only time anybody's going to meet me, I want it to be a good experience for them. I want to be kind, I want to ask their name.
I want to are very good at I've seen you do it. Yeah, it's just.
Really important that you that you see people and value them as individuals, because.
They I'm tried, but most of the time I'm certain that's not true.
You are not. And you know what, we wouldn't have the lives we have without them. They bought my records, all three of them. Oh no, I had thirty some records, sixteen records, but thirty people they bought. They bought everything I was putting out there. They watched the show. You know, I don't like the word, but religiously, and that's they were. They were glued to it. I have the same fans. I must say, a lot of them have died, but some of my critics. So anyway, everybody goes, everybody goes. It's just a matter aware. Yeah, where do you think we go at the end?
You know, I don't think. I don't think there is a nand I agree with you. I don't think there's I mean, the end of this realm. Yeah, I don't think there's a beginning, and I don't think there's a nan.
Are we real right now? Because some people think that we're illusion it's almost like a matrix thing we are.
That's a that's a little too hashish for me. Here's to here's what I think. I think that everything is everywhere all the time.
That would be God.
I'm beginning to get a smell of that. But I feel like that whatever it is. Have you heard of a guy called Shakespeare?
M of course, Okay, I love Shakepeare. Yeah. So there's this guy Shakespeare, right, and he writes this play about a guy. If he really wrote it could have been Yeah, that's true.
I think it was probably written by Yeah, Chris Christopher Marlow died in a knife fight I didn't know, in South.
London, fighting over his copyright. I think he's just like he liked to get drunk and fight. And that's when playwrights were play rights. They were never sitting around wearing glasses. They were like out stabbing each other. Yeah.
It didn't look like Neil Simon.
No no, no, no, no, they were they were out they wore big puffy trousers, and they went out and they well.
There's the story. Occasionally I wear poofy trousers.
But Shakespeare wrote in that play Hamlet, he wrote, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy's ratio. Yes, and I think that that. I think that's the right quote. And if it's not.
Herotia, I remember the quote is just like it's so true. I mean, in your peon finite mind, who can box up God?
Saying Augustine of Hippo said, trying to understand the mind of God is like trying to pour the ocean into a cup.
That's right.
And a wee woman that I heard in a twelve step meeting in Glasgow said something very similar about God. She said, Son, if God was small enough for me to understand, it wouldn't be big enough to do me any good now.
And that that's I think that's something in in that year. Yeah, that's where I am. I think, yes.
And and you know what, I also remember you saying to me, and forgive me if it's not, I've already written about it in the book. I sent you the book. So again I got your permission. So yeah, I just remind you can say on your life. You said that time that we talked about you and why do you love me and all of that. The other thing you said, Kath, you know, you know I'm still We were closing, we were rapping soon, and you said, you know, I'm still not to your guy. I don't believe in your guy. That's what it was, Kath. You know, I still don't believe in your guy. And I said, I know, and I said, no, I don't, But I said, I know you don't. But you know what I do know about you at this point, I know that you. I'm gonna say this properly. The life that Jesus lived. You said something about the life, but the life that Jesus lived. If every single person on this earth lived the way Jesus lived his life, the world would be a very different place. And you said that I believe one hundred percent.
Yeah, and I do. Yeah, and I do believe that.
And I also here's something else I'm going to say about you before we funny show, because apparently you need two.
Full episodes of this podcast.
One I'm not going anywhere.
Yeah, Well, okay, we'll see for season five. But you I believe this. I've said this about you before. You are a Joi and here's why. Because you would never ever let anything you believe stand in the way of you helping another human being.
And I've seen you do it.
And that is I know this is not a word to use, but that, to me is what Christian should look like.
Well, that's what Jesus looked like. Then well done, you're doing funny money.
Well you know, it's so interesting because the first people who believed in Jesus were obviously Jews, and I didn't. There was no word of Christian then, because that's a that was a Greek word. Later that came far later. They were called followers of the way. Jesus was a Jew, and the Jews who were his disciples, and there were thousands of them. Then that's why they had to crucify him. He was getting way too much power and he was too much of a too much of a threat to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the religious guys who controlled everything. Jesus was getting them to understand that your tithes are not what God wants. He wants your heart. Well, wait a minute, the ties, the ties that that's how we make our living around here, you know that kind of thing. That's why he took a whip too. The only time Jesus was sort of violent, people will say he wasn't violent at all. He was righteously angered. He picked up the whip, and he didn't take out on the money changers. He upset the tables, all the tables where the money was, and he said, you have made my father's house of prayer into a den of thieves. And they had to crucify him. Then you go after the money. Now we're now, now we're in trouble.
Yeah, you know what, I think, that's still a bit of a problem.
If good, it doesn't happen anymore, Thank goodness.
Yeah, everybody's fine now, and money is not important.
The man is stretching his arms like, thank God. I'm done with other believe in God.
Thank whatever. I'm not sure about that.
I'm done with this woman who is sure about it?
For no, who loves you, I love you right back. Get out of here. I'm going
