Kathie Lee Gifford Reacts to Kelly Ripa’s New Memoir, Claims About Regis Philbin

Kathie Lee Gifford won’t be reading Kelly Ripa’s book after hearing what her Live! successor wrote regarding her relationship with the late Regis Philbin. Gifford, who hosted Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee for more than a decade before her departure in 2000, revealed in a Monday interview with Fox 5 that she was “very sorry” to see the headlines about Ripa’s memoir that referenced her late co-host, who died in July 2020 at the age of 88.

“You know, you never know what’s true and what’s not true. I went, ‘I hope this isn’t true. I just hope it isn’t.’ ‘Cause what’s the point? I don’t get it. I don’t get it,” Gifford explained. She added, “I’m not gonna read the book. I haven’t read it. I don’t even know if it’s out yet.” 

In her book, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, the All My Children alum wrote candidly of the ups and downs of hosting Live! With Regis and Kelly with Philbin from 2001 to 2011. “My name had to be smaller than Regis’ name on the Live! title card and branding. A game of inches, which speaks for itself. But on that we agreed. Seniority, after all,” Ripa wrote in the book of the power dynamics between her and Philbin. 

When it comes to her own relationship with Philbin, Gifford told Fox 5’s Rosanna Scotto, “I just know what Regis was to me, Rosanna. He was 15 years the best partner I could ever have professionally. But he was my friend. We were dear friends and after I left the show … for the next 20 years we became better friends. Dearer friends.” 

Gifford added that she hoped Philbin’s widow and four grown children wouldn’t have to see Ripa’s words. “Lord, protect Joy and the girls from this,” Gifford shared. She emphasized of her years with the late TV personality, “In all the years I’ve known him, I never saw him unkind to anyone. I never did. I’m just saying my reality is something completely different from that.”