‘The View’ Alum Elisabeth Hasselbeck Credits Barbara Walters for Dinner With the Queen

Elisabeth Hasselbeck credits her former cohost on The View, Barbara Walters for her dinner with Queen Elizabeth. If it weren’t for Walters’ sound advice, the mom of three may have just stayed home to eat tacos instead.

“She looked at me, blinked twice and said, ‘Darling, you must go,’” Hasselbeck said about Walters to a crowd at Church of the City in Franklin, Tennessee. “So when Barbara tells you to go, you just do it!”

However, this may come as a surprise after recently surfaced audio was released to the public that aired Hasselbeck’s feelings towards Walters on Aug. 2, 2006 after an on-air argument, which led Hasselbeck to storm off set and try to quit.

Hasselbeck is now opening up about her relationship with Walters, along with the success she’s had in the TV business over the years in her most recent book, Point of View: A Fresh Look at Work, Faith and Freedom. Last night, she shared several stories from her book to a large crowd of fans gathered at the church — one of which involved the Queen.

“I got an invitation one day… a royal invitation … it was real fancy, it smelled fancy, and inside this sealed envelope was an invitation for dinner with the royals,” she said.

Hasselbeck admitted she was in utter shock when she received the flattering invite, but at the same time, wasn’t sure on how to react. You would think the immediate answer would be “yes,” however, in her case, she wasn’t sure. She jokingly told the crowd that she had lots to do the night of the royal dinner — she had to take her kids to swim practice, she had to fulfill her duties as a mom and wife, and eating tacos at home with her family was simply more her style anyways.

That’s when Walters stepped in and encouraged her to go on this once-in-a-lifetime journey.

Once Hasselbeck and her husband and former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck arrived, she felt a bit out of place.

“In order to get ready for this, I could not put enough on,” Hasselbeck explained.

“My hair couldn’t move, I attached more hairspray than I needed to and I must have over-glossed a million times,” she added. “And I put on gloves. You can’t see them [as she pointed to a photo of her posing alongside the Queen, Prince Philip, George W. Bush, and Tim] but I’m wearing shoe clips, and then I had a second pair of shoe clips on my gloves — because you need a second pair of shoe clips on your little gloves when you meet the Queen. I mean, I was trying so hard to attach things.”

“It was the most decadent dinner and I did not feel like I belonged there, it was so fancy,” she continued.

Although it was out of her comfort zone, Walters gave her a few words of wisdom on how to compose herself in front of the queen.

“Barbara also said to me, ‘Do whatever the Queen does’ so it was like the worst game of ‘Mother May I’ that I had ever played!” she said while she and the crowed shared a laugh.

Hasselbeck says her dinner with the Queen was “an extraordinary opportunity” and feels “blessed” by it, even leaving her with a few funny stories to share with fans.

Although she and Walters have had their differences in the past, the former Fox & Friends anchor gives a lot of credit to the former 20/20 anchor. In fact, the day Hasselbeck exploded on The View after she said Walters “reprimanded” her on air, which ultimately resulted in Hasselbeck getting fired, she told the church crowd that Walters was the first to pick up her phone to help Hasselbeck find her next job.

Because Hasselbeck opens up about her relationship with Walters, dinner with the Queen and her experience as an Emmy Award winning talk show host in her new book, she credits her faith in God to the blueprint of it.

“I didn’t have a goal other than to just be obedient and listen [to God],” she said as she shared her “why’s” on writing a book that was so outside of her comfort zone. Her first two books,”The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide” and “Deliciously G-Free: Food So Flavorful They’ll Never Believe It’s Gluten Free: A Cook Book.” are strictly focused on a gluten free diet because that’s what’s dear to her heart as a person who’s living with Celiacs Disease.

To order Hasselbeck’s new book “Point of View: A Fresh Look at Work, Faith and Freedom” click the link to her website Elisabethhasselbeckbooks.com.