KATHIE Lee Gifford yesterday revealed for the first time that she quit her famous morning TV job with Regis Philbin in 2000 to be with her dying father.
“My daddy was dying, and I was not comfortable making it public,” Gifford says. “I had a very personal reason for not going through yet one more painful experience in a public way.”
Gifford says her father, Aaron Leon Epstein, was suffering from a progressive brain disease similar to Alzheimer’s called Lewy Body Dementia (LBD).
Epstein, 78, died in 2002, two years after Gifford left the show.
Kathie Lee – who next month will return to “Live With Regis & Kelly” as a guest for the first time since she left seven years ago – says she’s waited all this time to reveal the real reason behind her departure because the experience of losing her father has been so painful.
“I knew it was going to be a horrendous family experience. I just had to have that time with him without cameras in my face and without having to explain things,” she said. “I wanted my daddy to be able to die with the dignity in which he had lived his life.”
She said yesterday that she understood the decision by the show’s producer, Michael Gelman, to keep her off “Live” until now.
Kelly Ripa needed time to establish herself as Regis Philbin’s new sidekick, Gifford said. “I was so closely associated with the show and so closely branded with it that it was extremely wise for them to distance themselves from me in order to give Kelly a chance to make an impact – which she’s done beautifully,” Gifford says.
Since 2000, there has reportedly been a rift between Gifford and Gelman – but he denies it.
Gifford says simply she left the show after experiencing an epiphany while guest-hosting David Letterman’s “Late Show” when he was recovering from open-heart surgery.
“It was an extraordinary experience,” she says. “It was like an electrical current went through me, and I had never felt so alive, and it all happened at the same time that my father was dying – so I made a personal decision to leave.”
Gifford, who remains close with Philbin, says she has only regretted leaving “Live” once – in the days after Sept. 11.
“It really was the first time in 30 years that I did not have a platform to be part of the healing process,” she says.