In OprahMag.com's series Coming Out, LGBTQ change-makers reflect on their journey toward self-acceptance. While it's beautiful to bravely share your identity with the world, choosing to do so is entirely up to you—period.
Andy Cohen needs no introduction.
The St. Louis-born TV personality, 51, became the first-ever out gay host of a late-night talk show when Watch What Happens Live premiered in 2009. An Emmy winner, he’s known not only for mingling with A-list best friends like Sarah Jessica Parker and Anderson Cooper, but also for his work as a New York Times bestselling author, radio host, and the producer behind beloved Bravo shows such as Top Chef, Million Dollar Listing, and the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Do The Real Housewives ring a bell? Yup, he's the one who helped make that franchise a 2000s phenomenon.
But more importantly, Cohen has secured his spot as one of the few LGBTQ superstars that informs the world about the beauty and challenges that gay men—and all members of the LGBTQ community—experience daily. While hosting major celebrities like Lady Gaga, Meryl Streep, Meghan McCain, and, yes, our very own Oprah on his show, Cohen has flipped a script that traditionally cast gay people as the butt of the joke. Instead, he directs hilariously inappropriate questions toward straight people and leads memorable segments such as “How To Tell If Your Boyfriend Is Gay.” People love Cohen, and his contagious smile and “sit on my couch” demeanor suggest that Cohen loves the world, too.
In February, Cohen made waves—and uplifted an underrepresented LGBTQ minority—when he welcomed his first child, a baby boy named Benjamin Allen, via surrogate, later introducing him to the world in a very Andy sort of way: on the cover of People. The first few Instagram photos he posted of little Benjamin drew plenty of criticism from dad-shamers the world over, but he took it in stride, calling them “judgy as f***.”
That doesn’t meant fatherhood hasn’t come without its challenges. For support, he turns to close friends like Parker, who has three children of her own. In fact, Cohen tells OprahMag.com that the former Sex and the City star pieced together his entire baby registry. But his biggest struggle so far? “Just getting the hang of the car seat and collapsing the stroller—it’s impossibly easy but for some reason, I’m a moron,” Cohen jokingly told us while discussing his partnership with Autotrader, his latest of the many hats he wears in his career.
Explaining that after Benjamin’s arrival, he swapped his bachelor-style convertible for an SUV, Cohen explains why he wanted to work with the company. "They're the go-to resource for car shoppers with the largest selection of cars to choose from," he says. "I was downsizing. Well, would it be downsizing or upsizing?” (Did we mention the man is always working?)
Cohen has opened up about earning a greater understanding of his sexuality both on television and in his memoir, Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture. But he admits that the recent 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots got him revisiting the subject, realizing that he doesn’t exactly plan to come out to Benjamin because: “He’ll see me—he’s a smart kid, he might already know.”
Ahead, Andy Cohen reflects on how he came out of the closet—first to friends and family, and later publicly—and learned to embrace his identity, as told to OprahMag.com.
I first started to recognize that I was gay in the men’s locker room at my dad’s tennis club. I was like: “Huh. Why is this titillating to me?” Around 12 or 13, I realized what was actually happening—and I was devastated. It was the early ‘80s and there were no gay people on TV, no gay role models. I wasn’t hopeful about my future, and I did not think that there was a way that I would be able to reconcile with being an out gay person. In high school, the plague [HIV/AIDS crisis] hit, and everyone started dying. I thought, “If I’m gay, I’m gonna die.” My friends were all constantly saying fag, and they said it on TV all the time—it was in the vernacular, and it was not shocking. I would kind of shut down when I’d hear it; I just didn’t think my friends and family would accept me.
In late high school and early college, I became sexually active. Then I was like, “Well, there’s no turning back!” When I was an undergrad student at Boston University, I felt like I was a secret agent as a gay man. On one level, it was incredibly terrifying, because you didn’t want to be found out. I remember traveling to New York and going into the clubs like, really quickly. On the other hand, when you walked in, it was the most liberating experience you’ve ever had in your life. It was like going from terror to freedom. When you’re in this place and the music’s pumping and there’s all these guys in the same boat—it was great.
At that point, I started telling my friends. It took them all a little bit of time to get used to it and accept me. They were all mad at me. Someone recently wrote me a letter and said, “My best friend came out to me and I want to support him, but I’m so mad at him that he didn’t tell me before this.” My friends went through that—especially my best friend, who’s straight and poured his heart out to me for years about every intimate detail. I hadn’t told him who I really was, and he felt betrayed by me. To the person who wrote me the letter, I said: “This isn’t about you. This isn’t your moment to be mad. You have to understand that this person wasn’t comfortable saying this. It’s not about you, it’s about him. You have to let that go.”
Eventually, I wound up going to London to study abroad. I was 20 years old, and when I came home, my mom had found a letter that I wrote to my roommate in London. The letter said, “I told my friend Jackie, 'I'm freaked out because I don't know how to tell others.” It was clear I was coming out to people in the letter. I'd originally written it in my journal, when I realized I’d have to come out eventually, and it said everything I felt I needed to say; it was a long, freeing kind of purge of self-expression in which I was just explaining who I was, which I often used to tell my friends. After my mom found it, I came out to her—and she later wound up getting involved in an AIDS charity in St. Louis because she wanted to get involved in my community. The rest is history.
In 1989, I had my first internship at CBS This Morning in New York, which Gayle King now co-hosts. I was in the closet, and I remember being in the control room as Vito Russo was on the screen. People started laughing, calling him a fag. I was working late one night with the correspondent I was interning for and her producer, and they were just grilling me about women, asking: “Who are you dating?” I was really cagey, and finally I said to the woman—who was my producer!—“Are you f****** with me? Why are you doing this?” And she goes, “What do you mean?" I said, “I’m gay,” and she goes, “Are you kidding me?” She couldn’t believe it—and she then felt like she had to confess something to me, so she proceeded to tell me she was getting a divorce. After that, I came out at work.
By the time I was hired, which was the next year, I was not only the youngest producer, but I was probably the youngest out person at CBS News. It was just a part of who I was. I wasn’t bringing guys that I was seeing around or anything like that, but I was comfortable with it. I went to my first New York City Pride when I was an intern at CBS. Again, it was at a time when everyone was dying, and it was incredibly moving to be there. I felt more connected to the community that I’d ever felt before. I hope people realize today that we are still fighting. Just because every bank and corporation has rainbow flags on it doesn’t mean that the fight is over. Our rights are seriously threatened, and the fight continues.
There were moments in pop culture and politics that influenced me through the years, of course. It was a big moment for all of us when Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997. Bill Clinton ran for office in the early '90s. He was campaigning and talking about gay people in his campaign speech—that was the first time a presidential candidate had done that. We were like, “Whoa, this is amazing.” Those were the scraps we were living on. And then the passing of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" came, which was horrible.
Real World coming to television with Pedro Zamora on season three in San Francisco was a huge influence on me. They were telling stories about being gay that no one else was. Then marriage equality passed.
And then, I remember when I had to come out on TV. It was during the first Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion in 2009, and Teresa Giudice’s husband said something that Danielle Staub thought was homophobic, or disrespectful to gays. We had a conversation about it, and Theresa said it wasn’t offensive. I said—and this is way before I started inserted myself into anything—“Look, I have to say, I’m the only gay guy in the room. I am gay, and it was not comfortable to me.” At the time, it was kind of a big deal, because I hadn’t come out publicly on TV. This was way before Watch What Happens Live, and I guess I had never said it. Weirdly, that was kind of my "public" coming out.
I wanted Watch What Happens Live to be inclusive of everyone from the moment we started in 2009. It certainly has gay tendencies, but it’s not a "gay show." But I mean, I like to say things that gay people will say, like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe he just said pass around the party bottom!”—or some other insane thing. I’ve also arguably objectified guys on my show in a way that I thought was interesting because no one’s ever seen a guy do that with another guy. It’s all in fun and games, but it’s turning around the notion of male talk show hosts objectifying women on their shows. I’m doing it as a wink.
One of the things I love about what Bravo’s done is that they’ve embraced the LGBTQ community and put them on television—not just because they’re gay, but usually because they’re interesting for some other reason. They’re great chefs, they’re great designers, they’re great stylists, they’re great house-flippers. Whatever it is, they’re s**t starters like me. And as a producer I think what I like is when a gay person can turn it on and it’s just like, they’re gay, and they’re not making a big deal out of it. That’s the post-gay world we live in. It used to be that if you were gay, that was the only thing. But I’m a million other things, you know?
I’m proud of being the only gay late-night talk show host. I like to think there’s some kid in St. Louis who turns on my show and is like, “Wow! That guy’s gay, and he seems happy.” I didn’t have that, and there are so many stories being told in every form, in every medium. It’s a great moment to be gay.
If I could offer advice to anyone watching my show who is afraid of coming out, I’d suggest they start by telling one person. Find your safe space. And if you don’t have one person, call the Trevor Project hotline at 1-866-488-7386. Let that be your one person. All it takes is one person, and that person can be your anchor. Then maybe you’ll have two people after. You will grow from there, and I promise that it will get better.
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As the Senior Editor of OprahMag.com, I'm a jack-of-all-trades, overseeing our entertainment coverage (we cover TV shows like The Politician and Big Brother, movies such as J.Lo's Hustlers and Lena Waithe's Queen and Slim), features, news items, and— as her number one fan—all of Lady Gaga's whereabouts. I proudly edit Coming Out, a series where LGBTQ+ change-makers reflect on self-acceptance. And I edit our Weird or Wellness series, which I highly recommend you read on the weekend. Prior to O, I began my career in the fashion department at Marie Claire, and eventually moved on to InStyle, where I dabbled in social media and covered events such as the Grammys, Toronto International Film Festival, and New York Fashion Week. A native of Miami, I received my journalism degree from the University of Miami. One time, Rosario Dawson complimented my hair and asked to touch it. I let her.
