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 distinguished media executive and former CEO of both Fox and Paramount, revealed his homosexuality in a candid article written for New York magazine on 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
Nine months later, while returning from his first vacation as boss of Paramount, he arrived home to an invitation for a dinner being held by Von Fürstenberg for mutual friend Sue Mengers.
The late, well-known Hollywood agent ended up coaxing Diller to come after he had initially declined.
When he did, he recalled hitting it off with the statuesque dress designer, who had already separated from her her first husband by that point. The two would divorce in 1983.
During the party, he and Von Fürstenberg made their way to a sofa – ‘far away from the rest – where they spoke, flirted, and exchanged information.
On his way to the elevator, Diller – despite already coming to terms with being gay – said he realized had been seduced.
He called Von Fürstenberg – creator of the wrap dress – the next day, and they enjoyed an authentic Chinese dinner Diller noted was ‘served by her Chinese butler and cooked by his wife.’
Afterward, ‘on the same sofa as the night before,’ he notes – the two made out at length ‘like teenagers.’
‘[It was] something I hadn’t done with a female since I was 16 years old.’
In his op-ed, Diller described the pair’s on-and-off relationship over the years, and how it culminated in marriage in 2001. The two are seen together four years after Von Fürstenberg split with the noble in 1972
The two would continue their whirlwind relationship until the early days of Studio 54, until a fling between Von Fürstenberg and Richard Gere – then filming for American Gigolo – brought it to an abrupt end.
Diller blamed the blowup to his ‘overreaction’ to the romance. He had been one of the producers for American Gigolo.
Ten years later, the Von Fürstenberg and Diller, then 43, would link up again.
Over the course of the next decade, ‘without plot or plan,’ the two became closer and closer, rekindling their ‘first ferocious love,’ as Diller put it.
On February 2, 2001, the two finally got married, 26 years after that first, fateful meet in Manhattan.
By this point, Diller had held successful stints at not only Paramount, but Fox and QVC as well.
He would go on to join the board of Coca-Cola the following year – a position he retains today.
At the time, Diller was heading the technology company Expedia. Now worth a reported $4billion, he still works there today.
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
Diller – a prominent Democratic donor who voiced support for Kamala Harris last year – also revealed how years before the two met, he was secretly cruising for men in West Hollywood as a teen.
This was before his professional stock would rise, starting in the 1960s and 1970s.
He also detailed a trip to gay haven Fire Island Pines during this time, where he says he was so overwhelmed by the free and open homosexuality on display that he fled the barrier island solo on a boat.
Over the course of the piece, Diller further admitted his fears that his preference for men would derail his burgeoning career, recalling how he ‘would never bring a man as a date to a heterosexual event’ but would never bring ‘a woman as a “beard,” either.’
Describing his behavior at the time, Diller added: ‘I wouldn’t do a single thing to make anyone believe I was living a heterosexual life.’
He recalled how he’d regularly ‘dart in and out’ of the side doors of gay bars while putting his sexuality ‘in a distant box’.
As for why he didn’t come out during the midst of his success, Diller said he was simply ‘too scared to do so,’ and said that coming of age in a less tolerant era had made him the way he is.
Diller also wrote rather movingly of how he enjoyed the material fruits of his labor while living an ‘arid’ existence because of his repressed sexuality.
Von Furstenberg – whose wrap dress served as a symbol of women’s liberation in the 70s – has yet to issue a statement on her husband’s piece.
