Barry Manilow is opening up about his sexuality.
The 82-year-old singer, who came out as gay in 2017, reflected on his life and career, and why he didn’t come out of the closet sooner after privately marrying his longtime manager and partner Garry Kief over a decade ago.
Barry Manilow thinks his career may have looked different had he come out sooner.
“It was a non-event. Nobody gave a s–t,” Barry said of coming out to the LA Times, and whether the world felt different afterward.
“They all knew. I never really hid it, but in the ’70s and ’80s, that would have killed the career, and I didn’t want to do that. So I just never talked about it,” he went on to say.
He and his husband have been together for over 47 years.
Barry also spoke about discovering he had lung cancer recently.
He revealed that he went to the doctor in November because his hips were hurting. And after an MRI on his pelvis, they did one on his lungs because he had recently had bronchitis.
“If he hadn’t done that, man…he saved my life, because there’s no symptoms for what I had. I could go on, nothing hurt — but they found the dot in my lung. They called me and said, ‘Could be cancer.’ That’s a bad word. ‘Not me. F— you. I can’t have cancer,’” he revealed.
“They don’t even know how long I had this thing sitting on me. It could have been years. If it had gone any further, then I would be up s—’s creek. It just so happened that it hadn’t spread, and boy oh boy, I thought I might be dying.” Find out what else he said.
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