For People magazine‘s June Pride Month issue, Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts opens up about coming out to an important member of her family.
She recalls telling her sister Dorothy she was gay and the support she received as a result of speaking her truth.
“I decided to tell my sister Dorothy [when] I was in my 20s. I knew I had to tell her,” she said before delving into details of that moment. “We went out to lunch. I’ll never forget it. We’re sitting down, I’m working up the nerve, over sweet tea, to ‘spill the tea.’ And right when I say to her, just like out of the movies, ‘Dorothy, I’m gay,’ the server put down our lunch. Then he fiddled around for what felt like five minutes.”
Roberts said her sister responded by crying, but not because she was upset at the news. “I look at her and she goes, ‘Oh, oh, I’m not crying because you told me you’re gay. I’m crying because you love me enough to tell me that.'”
The 61-year-old TV host came out publicly in 2013, revealing Amber Laign as her longtime girlfriend in a Facebook status update about her health after a bone marrow transplant. “I was just thanking everybody. I thanked my doctors, my parents. But then, was I not going to thank this woman who had been by me through this illness?” she said of the social media post. “I did it because I love Amber.”
Roberts says she was afraid to tell the world her secret “because I was afraid people couldn’t think I could be a Christian and gay.”
“To see how the public was so supportive, that really opened my eyes,” she said.
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