WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Famed news host and veteran broadcast journalist Gayle King says she is ecstatic about having become a mother-in-law. And the beloved new son-in-law is a South Florida native.

Virgil A. Miller, born and raised in West Palm Beach, married King’s daughter, Kirby Bumpus, in late 2020 at best friend Oprah Winfrey’s sprawling California mansion. King says due to covid it wasn’t the wedding they envisioned for her only daughter, but just the same, it was “perfection!”

“It’s amazing how things work out the way they’re supposed to,” she said. Instead of a huge, grand wedding, it was grand, also small, as in six people: the beautiful couple, King, her son William Bumpus Jr. who officiated the wedding, Oprah, and her beau Stedman Graham. Because of strict covid rules, they had to quarantine for 14 days prior. But the show went on, and “It was beautifully, beautifully done,” she stated.

King says she really is over the moon about her newly expanded family. “I’ve always called us a tripod (referring to herself and her two children), but now, with Virgil, we’re a perfect square!” she quipped. She said she adored Miller from the start. “He is so solid. I asked Kirby, ‘Does he ever get mad?’ He’s so even keeled. He’s also a strong man. I’m so happy for them!”

Before Miller became a part of America’s own version of a royal family, he was noted in Tallahassee, Fla., where he graduated from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU). According to the local Tallahassee Democrat newspaper, Miller was a standout at the school, earning bachelors and masters degrees; was student government president; drum major of the world-renowned Marching 100 Rattler band; inducted into two honor societies; and a member of the FAMU branch of the NAACP.

FAMU Nation is said to be immensely proud of him, but so are those who knew him growing up in Payne Chapel AME in West Palm Beach, where he was active, highly lauded and wellliked. King said her daughter has a photograph of him as a little kid holding a big Bible. “You can’t go wrong with a man brought up in the church and raised in the South,” she said.

Miller worked for more than a decade in Washington, D.C., where he was longtime chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, and became acquainted with other leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus. He reportedly joined the prestigious law firm Akin Gump in 2019, and also has amassed awards and honors over the span of an illustrious career in the nation’s capital.

Adding one of South Florida’s native sons to the family has made King as proud as ever. “I’m a mother-in-law! Could you believe it?” she said.