NEED TO KNOW
Kathie Lee Gifford is recalling seeing her old colleague, Regis Philbin, two weeks before his death at age 88
She says they had a three-hour lunch and ‘laughed their butts off’
She also says she heard the Lord’s voice tell her it would be the last time she saw him
Kathie Lee Gifford is opening up about the last lunch she had with her former co-host Regis Philbin, telling PEOPLE that she saw him two weeks before his death in 2020, and that they ‘laughed their butts off.”
“I saw him a lot,” Gifford says, of remaining close with Philbin after she left their talk show, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, after 15 years together. “We became much closer friends even as the years went on, after I left. We lived very close to each other in Greenwich.”
Gifford, 72, who just released her new biblical fiction book Nero and Paul, says that even though she moved to Tennessee after she left Today in 2019, she still visited the East Coast every six weeks and would check in on her old pal.
Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford in 1984
Credit: Ron Galella Collection/Getty
“I saw him two weeks before he died,” she says of Philbin. “We had a three-hour lunch, and I had everything he loved made for him that day. And we laughed, oh, we laughed our butts off.”
She says when he passed, she woke up with a strange feeling.
“I was back in [the South] and had writing sessions and recording sessions and was always busy, but then one morning I woke up, and the Lord told me very clearly — I don’t hear him, but I know his voice, if that makes any sense — and he said, “Get on a plane and go home.'”
Gifford continues, “I didn’t know why he said it, but I got on a plane, and no sooner had I landed than I turned my phone back on and there was a message from a dear friend who said, ‘I’m so sorry about your friend Regis.’ And I knew, because when I’d seen him two weeks before, when he got out of the car to come into my house, [the Lord] said, ‘This is the last time you’re gonna see him.'”
Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford in 2015
Credit: Rommel Demano/Getty
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Gifford felt some peace when she learned that he’d enjoyed their final meeting as much as she had.
“I went over to see his wife and their two daughters, and right as soon as I knew, took all my wine and a whole ton of food, whatever I had, got over there and had a wonderful visit with Joy,” she recalls.
Gifford continues, “I won’t go into it because it was private, but the main thing she said to me that I’ll never forget was, “‘Kathie, the last time I heard Regis laugh was with you.'”
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