Billionaire Barry Diller has come out as gay – but insists he enjoyed a full sexual relationship with fashion designer wife Diane Von Furstenberg.
Diller, a renowned media exec who previously served as CEO for both Fox and Paramount, opened up about his homosexuality in a soul-baring article penned for New York magazine Tuesday.
The 83-year-old credited with creating the Fox channel wrote of Von Furstenberg: ‘While there have been a good many men in my life, there has only ever been one woman.
‘And she didn’t come into my life until I was 33 years old.’
Diller and Von Furstenberg enjoyed a jewel-encrusted existence after meeting in 1974, with the jet-setting pair splitting their time between ritzy New York, Connecticut, Los Angeles and Aspen.
They split during the early days of the disco era in the late 1970s, with Von Furstenberg subsequently hooking up with actor Richard Gere, whose movie American Gigolo was being produced by Diller at the time.
Diller told of how he bought Von Furstenberg with 29 diamonds for her 29th birthday – and ended up giving them to her in a Band-Aid box.
The pair enjoyed an on-off relationship and finally wed in 2001 – a union some dismissed as attempt to put to bed rumors of his homosexuality.
Diller has now confirmed that he is indeed gay and has always been attracted to men.
Barry Diller, pictured with wife Diane Von Furstenberg in 2000, has come out as gay. He previously held leadership positions at Paramount, ABC, and Twentieth Century Fox, and is credited with creating the Fox network
Diller, a renowned media exec who previously served as CEO for both Fox and Paramount, opened up about his homosexuality in an article penned for New York magazine. Despite being married, speculation has swirled surrounding his sexuality for decades
But he also insists that his romance with Von Furstenberg, 78, is genuine.
The pair’s early passion was so intense they were once caught having sex by billionaire music mogul David Geffen while visiting his house, he writes.
Like Diller, 82-year-old Geffen spent his formative years dating a steady stable of women that included Cher before coming out as gay in 1992.
Diller first, though, wrote how he initially met Von Furstenberg in 1974 – an encounter ‘that began with indifference’ at a high-profile gathering at the famed Dakota apartment building on the Upper West Side.
At the time, Diller was the CEO and chairman of Paramount and Von Furstenberg, now 78, was wed to her first husband Austrian Prince Egon von Fürstenberg.
Both were present at the party, and it saw the noble criticize Diller’s outfit (rightfully, he admitted).
A quick interaction with his wife offered no hint of the romance that would eventually come, Diller recalled.
‘She looked through me like cellophane, and I left that night thinking that after her casual obliviousness and Egon’s put-down, nothing could ever induce me to see either of them again,’ the mogul remembered.
Portrait of of fashion designer von Furstenberg and her first husband, Austrian prince Egon von Furstenberg in New York City in the early 70s
In it, Diller described the pair’s on-and-off relationship over the years, and how it culminated in marriage in 2001
Diller also recalled how years before the two met, he was secretly cruising for men in West Hollywood as a teen – before his professional stock would rise during the 1960s and 1970s.
He detailed a trip to gay haven Fire Island Pines, but says he was so overwhelmed by the free and open homosexuality on display that he fled the barrier island solo on a boat.
Diller admitted how after achieving success, he became increasingly terrified that his preference for men would derail his career, describing his behavior at the time: ‘I wouldn’t do a single thing to make anyone believe I was living a heterosexual life.’
Diller recalled how he’d regularly ‘dart in and out’ of the side doors of gay bars while putting his sexuality ‘in a distant box’ and his wealth compounded around him.
The tycoon says he was too scared to declare his homosexuality during the 1970s, but insisted he did not want to deny it.
He said he was simply ‘too scared to do so,’ and said that coming of age in a less tolerant era had made it much harder for him to be open about who he was.
Diller wrote movingly of enjoying the material fruits of his labor while living an ‘arid’ existence because of his repressed sexuality.
Diller met Von Furstenberg – creator of the wrap dress – in 1974, when he was 33.
The pair hated each other on their first meeting, but met again a year later – with sparks quickly flying.
The couple had an on-off relationship until 1991 and finally married in 2001.
Diller described their union as a ‘unique and complete love.’
Diller, pictured with Von Furstenberg in 1993, suggested that he has always known that he’s gay, but that he has only been able to speak openly about his sexuality after decades in the closet
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