OPRAH: COME ON OUT!!!!

Gayle King talks Oprah, lesbian rumors....

Oprah Winfrey wasn't the only one moved to tears as she told Barbara Walters about her friendship with Gayle King. King admits that she, too, found herself bawling because of her BFF.

King, 55, tells USA Today she was in Tasmania when she watched the ABC TV special in which Winfrey, 56, described her as "the mother I never had. She is ... the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves."

"I called her and said, 'I'm sitting in my room crying all by myself,' " says King, who, despite the touching tribute, asked Winfrey why she started sobbing. "She said, 'I was just caught off guard. No one had asked me the question that way.' "

The O magazine editor tells USA Today that despite 30 years of friendship, she and Winfrey have never really vocalized their feelings about each other.

"Why would she say, 'You're the mother I never had?!" King laughs. "Why would she say that to me? I know we mean a lot to each other, but no, we don't go around expressing our love for each other. It just is."

As for all that speculation that the women are more than friends, King says she could care less.

"It used to bother me, and now I say, 'OK, if people believe it, there's nothing we can do to change their minds.' Oprah has been so outspoken and I have about my dating life, my desire to have a significant other, that it's just silly that we would deny or hide that because it implies something is wrong," she says. "That's what bothers me more than anything. There's nothing wrong."

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