Barbara Walters just revealed on the The Oprah Winfrey Show that in the 1970’s she had been having an affair with US Senator Edward Brooke. Senator Brooke who was married at the time and Walters who had been separated from her husband when they met at an N.Y.C. restaurant in ‘73 when she was in a busy dating phase. “Ed Brooke was simply the most attractive, sexiest, funniest, charming, and impossible man”, Barbara explained. He used to joke that “I was the oldest woman he had ever been attracted to.” She went on to write in her (She writes she was tempted to respond, “Oh yeah? Well, you are the blackest man I have ever been with.”)
Good for Barbara. Nice to see that even old-school white women still get “jungle fever” on occasion. Barbara goes in to more detail in her memoir, “Audition,”
“I was excited, fascinated, intrigued and infatuated,” Walters writes. She badly wanted to marry him, and her ultimatum prodded him to seek a divorce, she says. But friends warned the fraught ethical and racial issues could ruin both their careers; they broke up before he lost his 1978 reelection bid.
Barbara Walters goes on to say that she recieved some advice from a friend that made her realize that their secret love affair must end. “He said, ‘This is going to come out. This is going to ruin your career,”‘ then reminded her that Brooke was up for re-election a year later. “‘This is going to ruin him. You’ve got to break this off.”‘
Nice work Barbara. I ca’t wait to read your book and get the rest of the juicy details!
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