Kathie Lee Gifford is sharing how a decades-long feud with Howard Stern ended with a phone call.
In Gifford’s new memoir, “I Want to Matter: Your Life Is Too Short and Too Precious to Waste,” she explores the power of forgiveness through her relationship with the infamous shock jock.
“It was a surprise to get a voicemail from Howard Stern,” Gifford, 70, told Fox News Digital in an interview published Tuesday. “Once I listened to it, I said to my kids at the table, ‘Well, pigs have now officially flown. … (But) I just always believe God can touch anybody’s heart … I’m not allowed to hate anybody that hates me. Once you start praying for people, you can’t hate them. Love cannot live where hate does, and it’s a very simple thing.”
“The Baxters” star continued: “As you grow in your faith, you learn, ‘I’ve got to pray for that person right now. What they just said was so horrible,'” said Gifford. “Just pray. Ask God to heal them, because hurt people, hurt people. It’s the truth.”
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According to the book, per Fox News Digital, the feud between Gifford and Stern began in 1995 when she was chosen to sing the national anthem at Super Bowl XXIX, where her husband, former NFL player and sportscaster Frank Gifford, was set to broadcast.
The former “Today” host has said that she heard booing as she sang and later learned Stern had allegedly told his listeners to boo her.
USA TODAY has reached out to Stern and Gifford for comment.
Years later, when Stern was a guest on “Today,” she said God told her to reach out with a warm gesture.
“The Lord… said, ‘Kathie, go down and say hello to him, and wish him well with the show.’ And I said, ‘OK Lord,'” Gifford told Fox News Digital. “I got up out of my hair and makeup (room). Those girls had been told, ‘Don’t let Kathie go anywhere near the studio.’ … I couldn’t care less. I go downstairs. They go, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going to go say hello to Howard.’
“I thought it was about time,” she continued. “I said, ‘I want to wish you all the best with the new show.’ I got up, went back, sat down in the makeup room. They’d said, ‘Why’d you do that?’ I said, ‘God told me to.'”
Later that day, while getting on a flight, she received a call with no caller ID. The call went to voicemail, and when she listened, she heard Stern on the other end of the line.
“He says — I can’t even use the language that he used,” said Gifford. “It was a lot of F-words, but he was saying, ‘I can’t believe how nice you were to me. I’ve been so rude to you and you were so nice. I just need to apologize to you. Please call me.'”
Gifford did not know how to call him back, but later, when she got a second call with no ID, she answered, knowing it would be him.
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“My husband and son did not want me to take that call. He was horrible to me and horrendous to my entire family,” she told the outlet. But she had the private conversation, where Stern “asked me to forgive him.”
“I said … ‘I just want you to know that I forgave you 30 years ago.’ He goes, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I forgave you 30 years ago, and I’ve been praying for you every day since. And it’s the truth,” she said. Gifford said she then invited the radio host to dinner at her home.
“He’s a very odd duck,” Gifford said of Stern. “But then I saw him a couple of times over at Sirius, and we were fine. I can get along with a rock.”
Gifford has written extensively about second chances in her new book.
The former “Today” co-anchor discusses how she forgave her late husband and the “very painful” time in her life in an interview with Entertainment Tonight last month.
“My faith was definitely tested the most during the whole year dealing with Frank’s infidelity because I thought that I had finally found my soulmate,” Gifford said.
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The former football player for the New York Giants died in 2015 from natural causes. After Frank Gifford’s two previous marriages and three prior children, the couple married in 1986 and had two children of their own: son Cody Gifford and daughter Cassidy Gifford.
The former athlete’s affair was reported in 1997, with a former flight attendant paid by the tabloid Globe to seduce him, becoming a national news story.
Kathie Lee Gifford told USA TODAY that faith got her through.
“When you have faith in something as strong as we do, and we’re grateful for it, you have hope,” she said. “There is always hope.”
