Rosie O'Donnell says she felt forced to grieve one of her earliest relationships in private before she came out as a lesbian.
The comedian and former talk show host was a guest on the Tuesday (Aug. 11) episode of podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler, where she empathized with those who haven’t yet come out by recalling an emotional breakup.
Around the 24-minute mark of the interview below, O’Donnell shared that the breakup was with a woman named Corby, who was roughly 10 to 12 years older than the entertainer, and has since died. The couple dated for seven years and was one of O’Donnell’s first relationships.
"The pain of it was so intense," O'Donnell explained. "And I couldn't even tell my family. My family didn't want to hear about it."
Her family had been aware she was living with Corby and noticed when that changed, yet no one raised the subject or checked on her.
"Even though they knew I was living with her and they knew that now I wasn't. No one brought it up. Nobody said, 'Are you OK?' And that is very, very isolating and lonely," she said.
O’Donnell added, "It makes you feel that you're sort of doomed by being gay," before comparing it to being “left-handed or having blue eyes.”
“Like you people don't choose it. Who would choose it? It's not an easy life, but it's a true life if you know that that's who you are, you know?" she concluded.
O’Donnell publicly came out in 2002 during a stand-up engagement and joked in a 2020 episode of Red Table Talk: The Estefans that she decided to because of the Sept. 11 attacks the year prior.
The entertainer has been married twice: first to Kelli Carpenter before their marriage was annulled the same year, and also to Michelle Rounds, whom she divorced in 2015 after three years of marriage.
