Robin Roberts, host of Good Morning America, recently opened up about being afraid to come out to her audience in 2013 due to the stigma surrounded sexuality and religion: “they think you can’t be gay and a Christian.”
In an interview shared Tuesday with entrepreneur and author Jamie Kern Lynn on her podcast, The Jamie Kern Lynn Show, Roberts said she was hesitant to come out openly as a Christian and gay woman.
I am [gay and Christian] and I was so fearful that I would be shunned,” Roberts said. “I received a letter, a beautiful letter from the National Office at the Presbyterian Church after I announced about Amber, fully supportive, fully supportive, and then I think about all those years I wasted, worried, needless worry,” she went on to say.
In the first part of the two-part interview, Roberts opened up about her private relationship with wife Amber Laign. She says she nearly broke up with Laign after dating for a year because “there [was] no drama” before working to unlearn toxic relationship habits.
“I’m used to conflict and I was equating conflict with love,” Roberts said. “If [the relationship] was easygoing, then it must not be sexy, it must not be fun. The relationship was really good but this was my thinking.”
“Why did I think that was love before? Why do I think now that it’s no drama and it’s easy,” she continued. “Why do we look at that as not being sexy or not being a true relationship?”
Roberts and Laign first met in 2005 on a blind date. In 2013, Roberts publicly came out, acknowledging the relationship for the first time in a Facebook post. A week later, she shared a photo of the couple on GMA. The decision to bring her relationship on air was not an easy one.
“It’s not the Robin Roberts Show, it’s Good Morning America. And there are so many people whose livelihoods depend on the success of our show. And so, if I do something that hurts the show, that hurts them,” Roberts said. “I would walk down the street with Amber, and if somebody saw us, I would introduce her. I wasn’t trying to hide but yet, I wasn’t ready to, to fully [come out].”
View this post on Instagram
Roberts and Laign were married in September 2023 in an intimate ceremony in their backyard after 18 years together.
Roberts’ episode of The Jamie Kern Lynn Show is available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. The second part of the interview is expected to come next week.
