Barbara Walters had Affair with Edward Brooke

Barbara Walters told Oprah Winfrey in an interview to air Tuesday, that she had an affair with a married United States Senator Edward Brooke in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Brooke, a moderate Republican from Massachusetts, was elected to the Senate in 1966. At the time, Walters, who was divorced twice, was gaining prominence as a cohost of the Today show on NBC. According to the AP, Walters’s affair with Brooke ended before the senator lost his bid for a third term in 1978. Brooke was later divorced but has subsequently remarried.

Walters told Oprah she recalled a phone call with a friend who warned her:

"This is going to come out. This is going to ruin your career … This is going to ruin him. You’ve got to break this off.’"

Out of fear the illicit relationship would damage both her career and the career of Brooke, Walters never spoke of the affair publicly.

In the interview Walters described Brooke as Brooke "exciting" and "brilliant," and told Oprah:

"I was certainly infatuated … It was exciting times in Washington."

Walters is telling some of her secrets to sell her new book called Audition.

Brooke did not returns calls for comment. His second wife probably has a lot of questions for him.