Kathie Lee Gifford Talks About Being A Widow: If You’re Not Careful ‘What You’ve Lost In Life Can Define You’

It’s already been nearly four years since Today Show host Kathie Lee Gifford lost her beloved husband, Frank Gifford, but she is still reeling in the loss.

The couple was married for 29 years before Frank died after suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. According to Page Six, she has also been through a lot of other things over the past few years. In 2017, Kathie Lee lost her beloved mother, Joan Epstein, at the age of 87. Now, Gifford is an empty nester as her daughter Cassidy and son Cody are no longer living at home, and it’s been a lot for the TV personality to handle, especially the death of her husband.

“You battle different things as you get older, especially as a widow, you battle the loneliness when you lose a spouse,” she shared. “It dawned on me the other day, I’m a widow, I’m an orphan, because my mother also passed, and I’m an empty nester all at the same time.”

Now, she is trying to look at the glass half full as opposed to half empty and focus on the good things that she has in her life.

“If you’re not careful, what you’ve lost in life can define you. It’s so much better to be defined by what you still have, it’s just healthier.”

Now, the 65-year-old is making some big changes in her life not because she feels like she has to but because she feels like she needs to. Gifford says that the changes she is making are feeding her soul. Adding that if she gets complacent, despair and loneliness set in and “can be crippling,” and she doesn’t want that happening.

For starters, Gifford said that she moved from the large house she shared with her late husband because she felt like she needed to make “emotional moves and spiritual moves.” The talk show host explains that old memories may kill you, so it’s nice to find a place to make new memories instead. She also shares that following Frank’s passing, it was hard for her at first to go to social gatherings because she didn’t want people giving her “the widow look.”

But by far the biggest change that Gifford is making is career-wise. After 11 years alongside Hoda Kotb on the fourth hour of The Today Show, she announced that she would be leaving her post in April to work on other projects.

“Maybe it is someone else’s dream job,” she explains. “But there was a more powerful dream within me that had yet to be fulfilled. All I ever wanted to do, from the time I was a little girl, was sing and be in movies.”

It will be exciting to see what the future holds for Miss Kathie Lee.