Barbara Walters Had and Affair with U.S. Senator Edward Brooke

NEW YORK — After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters now says she had a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as "exciting" and "brilliant."
Appearing on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press. A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well as hers, Walters says.

Edward William Brooke III (age 88) was born October 26, 1919. He is an American politician and was the first African American to be elected by popular vote to the United States Senate when he was elected as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966, defeating his Democratic opponent, Endicott Peabody, 58%–42%. He was also the first African American elected since Reconstruction, and would remain the only person of African heritage sent to the Senate until Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1993.
The father of two daughters and a son, Brooke currently lives in Miami with his second wife, Anne.