How I Got This Way

by Regis Philbin

  But unpredictable escapades—even those (I truly hate to admit) that occasionally involved my more serious health issues—have led to quite a range of memorable moments in the course of our great ride together. I remember, once again during her first real day on the job, that I bellowed (purely as a joke): “Angioplasty! That’s what Kathie Lee gave me!” Then I looked over at her a little fearfully and said, “What are you gonna give me?” Well, it was true that a few years before Pippa arrived I’d successfully received the blocked heart valve ballooning angioplasty procedure and all had remained fine for a long while. But out of the blue, in the spring of 2007, I had to necessarily undergo a triple-bypass heart operation, which as you may know is no fun at all, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, I managed to rally myself back to work six weeks and one day after that difficult major surgery. But in the interim, I was proud of the way Kelly held down the fort with such finesse—and all kidding aside, I was more than touched by her concern throughout my recuperation. A couple weeks before I returned, I saw her one night go on with Dave Letterman (with whom I’d already formed quite the heart-problem support system). She knocked me out in talking about how she’d dealt with my absence: “I’m kind of exhausted,” she confessed very sweetly. “I never thought of a talk show as hard work. I thought that I was just supposed to sit there and, like, dust him off a little bit, and throw my head back and laugh at his jokes. Now, suddenly, I’m taking time cues. I’m trying to read off a cue card that I can’t see. It’s very difficult. The whole thing is, you go, ‘Look—I didn’t sign up for this. . . .’ Regis really is the show, and he does the majority of the work.”

  Well, she was being beyond overly generous, especially with her last sentence there. But I confess that work has always been my lifeblood and my pleasure, so I was thrilled to get back to our studio and start mixing it up with her again—and to very quickly diffuse any chance of things getting all sentimental and maudlin. I’m not too good at that stuff. After the audience kindly embarrassed me with a beautiful ovation, Pippa and I did agree that it had felt more like six months to six years since I’d last been sitting there. But then it was time to find our old rhythm of teasing byplay, which, as I’d expected, picked up pretty close to where we’d left off a month and a half before. . . .

  KELLY: I’ve gotta tell you. You look remarkable. I mean, it’s incredible.

  ME: Well, I lost eight pounds but I aged twelve years.

  KELLY: No, you did not age. Be honest. Did you have a face-lift? His heart surgery was just a ruse, wasn’t it?

  ME: No, I didn’t have a face-lift. I had a heart lift. . . . Anyway, I would regularly watch you in the mornings, and I’ve got to tell you something. When you’re not with me, you actually shine! Little glistenings of light come radiating off your face, you’re never happier, you’re never more—

  KELLY: [rolls her eyes] Ebullient?

  ME: Exactly right! You really are. What is it? What do I do to you to dim the light? [Here, despite my best effort, was where I saw the Big Emotion coming . . . uh-oh. . . . ]

  KELLY: Let me tell you right now: I felt that, for six weeks, my light was dimmed. Completely.

  ME: [now fighting for my life to bring back a little humor—please!] Awww . . . Isn’t she something? That’s a line she used on All My Children, 1988. I was watching that day! “My light has been dimmed!”

  KELLY: You can laugh about it all you want, but I personally missed you. . . . There were all these moments that I’d go, “Gosh. I am the luckiest person alive. I get to sit here with you every day. . . .”

  ME: Now you’re talking, baby! Now I’m beginning to see the light!

  Anyway, we were off and running and back on track with our regular routine that I’ve come to know so well. Every morning it begins like this: She comes out of her dressing room with about thirty seconds to go before airtime. We walk down the hall toward our studio to make that entrance and to begin that next show. And because she happens to be such a stunning-looking lady, I take great delight in stopping briefly at the occasional dressing room on the way down that hall and announcing to our male guests sitting there—in my most obnoxious way, “Take a look at what Regis gets every morning at nine o’clock, whether he wants it or not!” And then we’re out through the door to the stage, where the fun begins.

  That’s the way it’s been for just over a decade, as of this writing. Last February, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Live! With Regis & Kelly, during which John Ogle—our associate producer, whose expertise at archiving and splicing together classic moments from the show is uncanny—produced a week full of terrific montages that brought back lots of great memories. Naturally, he included many bits from our incredibly elaborate Halloween shows, the ones in which Gelman has insisted that Kelly and I (along with himself and the always game Art Moore, our executive in charge of production) climb into the guises of various famous personas for each segment of that annual hour. And as arduous and annoying as the process of pretaping so many of these dress-up bits has been, they do always magnificently showcase Kelly’s great versatility in truly becoming any character thrown at her. Each year, she somehow has made everyone she imitated look better and come across funnier than the real versions could hope to be. During the course of our 2010 Halloween show (which producer Elyssa Shapiro meticulously oversaw), for instance, Pippa’s pageant of transformations included Jersey Shore’s Snooki (with me as her tough guy pal “The Situation”), Cher, Lady Gaga, all three Kardashian sisters, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez, and other assorted players. In some of those segments, I was turned into the likes of Justin Bieber, Elmo from Sesame Street, Steven Tyler, and also maybe a less convincing version of Lady Gaga, to name a few.

  I mention that particular Halloween show for a reason—a reason that neither Kelly nor I fully understood back on the recent June evening when we found out we had won the Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Hosts during the Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony, which was being televised live from Las Vegas. I probably don’t have to tell you that neither of us were in Las Vegas at that moment: Kelly was off attending a music festival in Colorado, and I was half watching the festivities with Joy in our Greenwich weekend house. You see—despite my fluke solo victory back in 2001—it gets to the point that, when your show keeps going down in flames after contending so long for these awards, you just can’t help but lose interest. Kelly’s pal Anderson Cooper opened the envelope onstage that night and took a stymied look at the card revealing the recipients’ names before announcing that there had been a tie in the hosting category—between Oprah’s favorite medical guru, Dr. Oz (whose new syndicated series had already just won for Outstanding Informative Talk Show), and . . . us . . . Regis and Kelly. “Did you see the look on Anderson Cooper’s face when he saw our names?” I asked when we returned to our show a week later clutching our shocker Emmys. “The look said, ‘Why them?’ ”

  Kelly defended him by postulating, “We all know he just said our names—we probably didn’t even win these things!” And then she announced: “Now that we’ve won the glorious Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Hosts, we have decided to take ourselves out of the competition! So everyone else can experience Emmy gold. . . .” I added, “Yes, let the little people win!”

  But back to that 2010 Halloween show, which—we learned, further into the Host Chat on that postaward summer morning—turned out to have been the only hour from our entire year of work that Gelman submitted for Emmy consideration, representing not just our hosting skills but the Live! series as a whole. Strange but true—every Emmy nomination, whether for prime time or daytime, is always based on a single episode and never on the full season’s offerings. Which seems utterly ridiculous to me. I mean, we won our Emmys for playing dress-up? Please!

  “But that wasn’t a talk show at all!” I dismally complained on the air. “It was just an impersonation show. . . .”

  “Right,” Kelly piped in, “but the reality is
—as long as we are not ourselves, we can win!”

  I had to laugh. There was that spark again. Between the two of us, we’d found that one detail that could help us all laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

  Back in January, of course, I had announced that I was moving on from our show after fifty years since it all started for me talking into the camera on Saturday nights in San Diego and then having spent the last thirty-five of those years cohosting—on both coasts, no less. I spoke of all the fun I’ve had with each of the talented ladies I’ve worked with, and put my arm around Kelly, noting how I’d gotten to “look at this one over here every morning” during the last ten-plus years. Frankly, she had known of my decision for only a very short while and seemed to be terribly upset by it. At one point, she said, “I wish I could do something to make you change your mind.” At last, a straight line! And one that I didn’t let go by. I made like I was reconsidering everything I’d just said: “Well, now wait a minute . . . waaaaaiiiiitttttt a minnnnnnnutttte . . . maybe we can reach an agreement here—” It got a big laugh, but her sweet sentiment did mean a lot to me.

  Of course, we still had many more months ahead to keep having our usual fun, including one morning when we were marveling over all of the major departures by television mainstays that had been taking place during the last handful of months. Everyone, all at once, seemed to be moving on from their long-standing programs—Larry King, Katie Couric, Keith Olbermann, Meredith Vieira, Mary Hart, Jim Lehrer, and, of course, the queen of them all, Oprah Winfrey, who’d departed from her megahit program some days earlier. . . .

  ME: Wait, did Oprah go, too? We’re allllllll going—we’re making a run for it! You’re the only one left, you know what I mean?

  Kelly: Listen, somebody’s got to hold down this ship.

  ME: [teasing] Yeah, well, you’ll hold it down all right! To say the least!

  Which prompted the audience to applaud and cheer her on, not that she’ll need it. And to think that on her very first day as the full-time occupant of that seat to my left, I ended the show with the words: “I don’t know if it worked out. But if you don’t see her tomorrow, don’t blame me!”

  Well, believe me, you’ll be seeing her for all the tomorrows she ever wants. Her ride is only just beginning all over again. And incidentally, I’m so grateful to have helped launch the first leg of it.

  Wait a minute, did I just say “incidentally”?

  See what I mean?

  WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM IT ALL

  People who sparkle tend to make you sparkle, too, when they’re near.

  Awards are nice. But giving people a reason to smile is a reward you’ll value and experience far longer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  DONALD TRUMP

  There used to be so many famous, oversize characters in New York—I mean, you couldn’t miss them! Must have been a dozen of them in Toots Shor’s great old saloon every hour of every day and night, back in those colorful years so long ago. Their names were always in the papers. They were millionaires, athletes, show business people, and just regular hard-striving folks who were funny and lively and trying to take their place in the biggest big city anywhere.

  Nowadays, the wealthy are more or less in hiding. The athletes keep to themselves. Everybody is pretty private about where they go and what they are doing and what they may have to say. Once in a while, a young movie star will come through town stirring things up and the paparazzi and tabloids will go nuts—but it’s nothing like the boldfaced exploits of New York’s golden era. (I can’t help but wonder how gruff old Toots Shor himself would’ve dealt with this new breed of “reality show” stars—I mean, what would Toots think of Snooki? Or of those screaming Real Housewives of New Jersey and all these other places where women are shown screaming at each other? No question—and kind of sadly—we sure do live in a whole new world of “celebrities,” don’t we?)

  There is, however, one legitimately large-scale guy who will not go undercover, who certainly will not be quieted. He is one of the few great New York characters we have left: Donald Trump. Or as I like to call him: the Trumpster!

  Yes, he is flamboyant. He is colorful, and he is unafraid to take chances. His private plane is bigger than most. His Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago, is enormous, too. His golf courses are among the very best in the country. He literally lives higher—and also probably more luxuriously—than anyone else inside that tower he built . . . that tower which rejuvenated Fifth Avenue and brought New York real estate back to life in the early eighties. He is seen at movie premieres, Broadway show openings, and galas everywhere. Even at Lady Gaga’s Radio City Music Hall debut—which was filled with curious New Yorkers—she actually sent an aide into the audience to find Trump and bring him backstage. She desperately wanted to have her picture taken with him. And he was quite flattered. Also, Trump never misses a big fight—especially if he’s the one putting on the fight (or taking part in it!). He goes to all the key Yankee games. He once owned a pro football team, an airline, and, when Atlantic City was jumping, Trump built the biggest casino of them all, the Trump Taj Mahal; it ruled the town for years. He seems to be everywhere, and he doesn’t mind a camera taking his picture or a reporter quoting his latest provocative statements. In other words, he loves publicity. It’s part of his life and part of his business. He thrives on it. It works for him.

  When I came back home to New York in 1983 and was looking for a colorful character to interview for my show, I was told to go get Donald Trump. I took a camera crew over to his Trump Tower, which you couldn’t miss. Not only was it the most spectacular, most blinding, and most beautiful building on Fifth Avenue, but Trump had the most wildly dressed doormen in New York standing at its entrances, too. It was all a part of the show that is his life. And whether the crowds on Fifth Avenue loved it (as most did) or hated it—what passion that gleaming structure inspired!

  The doorman swung open the portals for me that day, and there he was—thirty-five years old, the hottest young guy in the hottest town. We met in his building’s overwhelming lobby, which features an eighty-five-foot waterfall spilling down over one of the walls. I had never seen anything like it—now this was a lobby! And I was truly just as impressed with him. I wanted to know about this guy—where he came from, how he built this monument to his own dreams, where he was going from here. I thought I’d get a good five minutes out of him. Forget about it. He was on fire. We must have stood there for a half hour, with Trump doing most of the talking, until the camera ran out of tape. . . .

  Maybe it takes one to know one—but this is a guy with the most amazing ability to talk extemporaneously when he’s “on.” And he never stops! So while the city’s rousing, old-time, larger-than-life days were quieting down, this young guy was practically yelling at the top of his lungs: “I’m here, New York! And I’m not leaving till I’m on top!” And once he got on top, he even enjoyed seeing how the press followed his personal-life adventures, some of which were kind of sticky if not pretty darned unpleasant. But he’s just that fearless.

  Many years ago, for instance, I happened to be having lunch with an old friend at an Italian restaurant in the lobby of the Trump Tower. And while sitting there, who do you think I caught sight of picking through the magazine racks just outside the restaurant? That’s right—it was none other than the Trumpster! After pulling down a few publications for purchase, he instantly rolled them up in his hand, making it impossible to see what he’d bought. At which point he spotted me and, without missing a beat, came over smiling, cheerful as ever. (Even way back when the tabloid papers were constantly beating his brains out with headlines about his divorce from his first wife, Ivana—the New York Post had designated it a front-page story for twelve straight days!—I wondered how he could take such a daily bombardment. It must have hurt, but he never showed it. He simply lived with it, got over it, and kept on going—which is no small feat, really.) But I was intrigued by
these magazines that he was hiding from view. So I told him I wanted to know! “Okay, you got me,” he confessed with a shrug. And then he unrolled the latest editions of the National Enquirer, the Star, and People magazine. Back then—same as now—he might not have liked what the media was saying about him, but as long as they were saying it, he wanted to know what it was. Anyway, I recall him walking off afterward still smiling. He also quietly picked up our lunch tab.

  It wasn’t too long after our very first meeting that I saw Trump again at Yankee Stadium for one of those celebrity exhibition baseball games designed to fill seats before the regularly scheduled ball game began. Trump played first base, and I was crouched nearby as his second baseman, but I could see pretty quickly that he could handle himself nicely with a bat and a glove. I don’t know exactly when we started becoming good friends, but it happened right around that time when we’d been teammates for a day. In the years since, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve driven up to Yankee Stadium together and sat in what was, and will somehow always be, George Steinbrenner’s suite. We loved George. He was the Man, the Boss, always happy to see us and always hungry for another championship. And as usual, there’d be a gang of New York notables on hand up in that suite. Everybody from the late Elaine Kaufman (whose Upper East Side restaurant, Elaine’s, was until its recent closing a famous literary hangout) to newsman supreme Mike Wallace and even His Honor, Mayor Mike Bloomberg—to any number of those aging eternal Yankee greats like Yogi Berra (with his fingers all weighed down by so many championship rings) or the “Scooter” himself, Phil Rizzuto, or the heroic slugger Reggie “Mr. October” Jackson.