During a guest appearance on HBO’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, the 80-year-old Copacabana singer said he didn’t think it was important to announce his sexuality during the earlier decades of his career.
Manilow came out in 2017, almost three years after he married his husband and manager Garry Kief in a private ceremony. The couple have been together for 45 years now, though they’ve kept much of their relationship away from the public eye.
When he came out to People magazine in 2017, Manilow — whose real name is Barry Pincus — worried he’d be “disappointing” some of his fans by revealing his sexuality. Instead, Manilow, who was 73 at the time, said the reaction from his fanbase was “beautiful.”
Despite his current feelings of nonchalance about his own coming out, Manilow said announcing his sexuality as his career was booming would have been a bad idea.
“Now being gay is no big deal,” he explained. “Back in the ’70s it would have killed a career.”
Regardless, the usually very private Manilow said he thinks “everybody knew that Garry and I were a couple all those years.”
“Really, Garry and I’ve been together for so long,” he said. “It just never dawned on me that we’re going to come out. But when we got married, it was a big deal, so we did.”
Manilow credited Kief for saving his life. He said he is thankful he had Kief to support him as his music career was taking off, despite keeping their relationship under wraps.
“As my career exploded, it was just crazy. And, you know, going back to an empty hotel room, you can get into a lot of trouble if you’re alone night after night after night,” Manilow explained. “But I met Garry right around when it was exploding. And I didn’t have to go back to those empty hotel rooms. I had somebody to cry with or to celebrate with.”
Manilow said he did not wish an isolated hotel room for any young people.
“It was pretty lonely until I met Garry. And then it was fun,” he smiled.
Kief is not Manilow’s first spouse. In 1964, Manilow married his high school sweetheart, Susan Deixler. They were married for one year.
Manilow told CNN’s Wallace he “really did love” Deixler, but added “the gay thing was pretty, pretty strong. I couldn’t deny it.”
The singer said he knew he was gay before marrying Deixler, but their marriage ended because Manilow couldn’t be the committed husband his then-wife needed. He revealed that his sexuality was not the reason his marriage failed.
“We had a very nice marriage, it was great, but I was away every night making music, as a young musician would be,” Manilow described. “It wasn’t good for me, and it wasn’t good for her.”
“I couldn’t be the proper husband,” he continued. “I was out making music every night, sowing my wild oats. I wasn’t ready to settle down.”
Brooklyn-born Manilow skyrocketed to international fame in 1974 after his release of the ever-popular pop-rock ballad Mandy. He became one of the biggest-selling musicians of all time. Prior to his success as a singer-songwriter, Manilow was behind a number of famous commercial jingles for brands like State Farm and Band-Aid — a gig that he has said helped him create catchy hooks for his own hit songs.
Check Out : ‘The View’ Audience Member Calls Whoopi ‘Old Broad’ During Live Broadcast.
An audience member during a recent episode of the ABC show “The View” called Whoopi Goldberg an “old broad.” It happened on Wednesday’s show when Goldberg and her cohosts took their seats to begin the show and the audience member shouted the words and Goldberg was taken aback.
We’re happy to see ya’ll. Cool, well, go on and have a seat, she said before addressing the heckler.
“Did you just call me an old broad? Yeah?” the 67-year-oId actress said to the heckler.
The camera then showed a woman who was wearing a large fur hat.
“She said, ‘You old broad,’ and I was like, hey, it’s Wednesday, and I am an old broad, and happy about it,” the host said before cohost Sunny Hostin said that being an “old broad” was better than “the alternative.”
The aIternative is not attractive to any of us, the stress said. “We all want to be old broads and old dudes, you know? The show’s cameras continued to show the woman again and again for the entire episode.
Goldberg caused controversy in December after making controversial statements again.
She had to apologize again for the comments she made about the Holocaust. As she was promoting her new movie “Till,” about a young black child who was viciously mur**red by a gang of white men in 1955, she was asked by a reporter about the comments she made on the show.
Earlier this year, Goldberg was suspended from “The View” for claiming the Holocaust was not about race. She apoIogized for the comments but in a new interview with the U.K. paper The Sunday Times, it appears her apology may not have been sincere.
“Remember who they were k!lling first. They were not killing racial; they were k*lling physical. They were k*lling people they considered to be mentally defective. And then they made this decision,” the actress said.
Journalist Janice Turner explained to Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, that there were race laws the Nazis created against Jews and said that “Nazis saw Jews as a race.”
“Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it? The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?” she said.
“It doesn’t change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street,” she said. “You could find me. You couIdn’t find them.”
“But you would have thought that I’d taken a big oId stinky dump on the table, butt naked,” she said, in reference to her comments that got her suspended from “The View.”
My best friend said, ‘Not for nothing is there no box on the census for the Jewish race. So that leads me to believe that we’re probably not a race, she said. But on Tuesday, a representative for Goldberg sent a press release that showed the host apologizing for the comments.
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