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By Movieguide® Staff
Kathie Lee Gifford is getting real about the realities of aging.
“The golden years? It’s a lie,” she told Yahoo. “You can do all kinds of stuff to your body, but it knows how old you are and where you’ve been and what you did when you went there. No keeping secrets from it.”
Gifford has been open about her health challenges over the years, including a difficult recovery from hip replacement surgery in 2024.
“It’s been really hard,” she told PEOPLE at the time, calling it “one of the most painful situations of my entire life.”
Related: Kathie Lee Gifford’s Secret to Aging Well? Leaning on the Lord
Gifford shared that her doctor told her the reason her hips were in such bad shape was because of her active lifestyle over the years.
“You climbed mountains, you made movies, you got on stages. You never took off your high heels, and you kept going and that’s why you’re going through what you’re going through,” she recalled her doctor telling her.
However, Gifford has no regrets — “[I ask myself] would I change that? No, I was doing what God put me on this earth to do. Every year of it, I was doing what He called me to do.”
In a 2025 interview with Fox News, she shared what has kept her motivated and excited through the years.
“A lot of women…think ‘Are there any possibilities left for me?’” Gifford explained. “And they have a sense of despair — some of them — a little sense of well, ‘What am I here for anymore?’ But I’ve always had purpose in my life. I’ve been solid and just steadfast. I’ve tried to be a believer in Almighty God, and if I wake up every morning, that means — I’ve got a pulse. That means he has got a purpose for me and that’s what I try to do is listen to his voice. Figure out what that purpose is, and go about it holding his hand.”
She continued, “I can’t breathe without Him, and never had a day in my life when I thought I could. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful that I came to that kind of faith early on in life. I don’t know what I would have turned out to be in Hollywood if I hadn’t been rooted in my faith. Right, wrong, immoral, moral. I mean, it saved me from a lot of despair.”
Gifford has no illusions about the realities of aging, but her faith has given her passion and purpose that keeps her going each day.
Read Next: How Kathie Lee Gifford Continues to Pursue Her Dreams: ‘I Am Doing What I Was Born to Do’
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