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September 14, 2006

McGreevey's comments to Oprah remain secret until show's broadcast

Former New Jersey governor James E. McGreevey, who had been publicly silent since announcing two years ago that he was gay and was resigning, made The Oprah Winfrey Show the first stop on his national book tour Tuesday. But exactly what he said on the Chicago set will remain a mystery until the show airs next week.

Audience members who attended the two-hour taping said they were instructed not to discuss the show or McGreevey's comments. The former governor's book, The Confession, has been cloaked in secrecy and will be released September 19, the same day the show is to air.

The 49-year-old Democrat waved and smiled at reporters from a sport-utility vehicle as he arrived at the studio Tuesday but did not speak to the media. About a dozen friends and colleagues accompanied McGreevey and his partner, Australian financial adviser Mark O'Donnell, 42, to Chicago for the taping.

"It was a good show," said Kathleen Keenan, a nurse from Spring Lake, N.J., among a group of women who said they were college friends of McGreevey and had submitted old photographs to Winfrey producers for the segment.

Keenan, who said she was McGreevey's date to a homecoming dance when the two were classmates at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., during the 1970s, declined further comment after the taping. Before the show, she said she and her college friends had suspected McGreevey's homosexuality.

"We were in shock, but we had sort of heard he might be gay," she said.

Some segments of the show, including clips from the home McGreevey shares with O'Donnell in New Jersey's Union County, were filmed previously. McGreevey's book traces his life through two failed marriages, his rise to the governor's office, and the sudden, public implosion of his political career.

McGreevey announced his homosexuality and his impending resignation in the same speech on August 12, 2004, and acknowledged that he had been involved in an affair with a man.

Julie Everett, a Cincinnati nurse, also said she attended college with McGreevey. "We're here to support him as his friends," Everett said before the taping. "His courage, his humility—he has been unbelievable since this ordeal. He's an inspiration to me." (Ashley M. Heher, AP)

Keywords:  McGreevey 
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