Gayle King appears as one of the four solo cover stars for the 60th anniversary edition of the iconic magazine.
Gayle King has the most supportive best friend in Oprah Winfrey!
On Tuesday, the CBS Mornings star found out on live television that she was one of the four women who would grace the solo covers for the 60th anniversary of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.
While King attended the shoot and knew that she would be included inside the spread, she was stunned when co-host Nate Burleson announced during their interview with Kate Upton and Hunter McGrady, that she was the third cover girl on the set.
The Emmy-winning journalist said that when she ran the idea of appearing inside the spread by Winfrey, she had nothing but support.
"Oprah said, 'You and I have two different ideas of fun. You would enjoy that.' I go, 'I do, I do," she tells ET's Rachel Smith. "But she said, 'It's so you, you should go for it.' and I do feel it's going for it."
King said that if her bestie or either of her children, Kirby or Will, weren't on board, she would have opted against it.
"If Oprah, favorite daughter Kirby, favorite son-in-law and favorite son, if any of them said, 'Eh I don't think you should do it,' it would have given me pause, but nobody said that."
Appearing inside Sports Illustrated was not something King said she ever envisioned for herself. In fact, she recalled believing it was a joke when editor-in-chief MJ Day asked her to appear inside the spread.
"I thought I was being punked when they called me," she quips. "Never in my wildest dreams. I can't tell you what this means to me. I think it speaks to what Sports Illustrated is and its terms of range of color, age, ethnicity and then all the wide variety of jobs that everybody does."
Aside from how inspirational the magazine is, King admitted there's another aspect that makes it even better.
"Number one, it's fun," she says. "We can talk about inclusion, all that stuff, but let me just say it is freaking fun."
For the 69-year-old, another selling point was the come-as-you-are idea and how she wasn't pressured to work out or look perfect prior to the shoot.
"I had a cheeseburger the day before which may be the meal when I die," she says about the prep. "That's the other thing that I liked about it, because I thought, "How can I get a rib removed in two weeks?' But she [MJ] said, 'No, we want you to come as you are.' Which also gives you another kind of confidence too. When someone says, 'We like you just the way you look.'"
Overall, King is impressed by her spread.
"I actually think that I look really fantastic," she tells ET. "But I also think they really captured what I do and how I look. Vibrant, that's the word. Because that's how I feel. That's how I feel to be on this planet this particular time in my life."
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