While appearing on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” this week, Kathie Lee Gifford spoke out to recall her favorite memories with her late former cohost Regis Philbin, who died back in July at the age of 88.
Gifford and Philbin hosted “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee” for fifteen years before she left the program in 2001, and she has never forgotten the joy that he brought to her during the many years that the worked alongside each other.
“Every day was fun with Regis. He was bigger than life. No one talks about themselves by their own name,” she said.. “He would enter any room—whether it was a huge auditorium or just him and me going to lunch—he would enter going ‘Regis is here!'”
“It was always a party with Reg,” Gifford added. “He lived to make everybody happy. I think that’s why ultimately he was ready to go from his world. He couldn’t go anywhere and be Regis. He couldn’t make people happy anymore.”
She went on to recall talking to Philbin’s wife Joy after his passing.
“She says, ‘Kathie that day we came to have lunch with you two weeks ago…that was the last time I heard him laugh,'” Gifford said. “That was a sweet gift from god that I would make my friend laugh.”
Gifford had previously elaborated further about her final lunch with Philbin.
“I was just so grateful the Lord gave me that final time,” Gifford said of their last meeting. “And it was so precious because when I talked to Joy the day that I found out right after he had passed, she said, ‘Kathie he hadn’t laughed in a long, long time.’ She said, ‘I was so worried about him.'”
“I think he was like Frank,” Gifford added, referring to her late husband. “He was just ready, you know? … And she said, ‘The day that we came to have lunch with you was the last time I heard him laugh.’ That will forever be a precious gift the Lord gave me, that I got to laugh again with one of my best friends in all my lifetime.”
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.
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