"I’m gay. Megan's my girlfriend. ... These aren’t secrets to people who know me," Bird said in the interview. "I don’t feel like I’ve not lived my life. I think people have this assumption that if you’re not talking about it, you must be hiding it like it’s this secret. That was never the case for me."

Sue says she has been out with her friends and family for many years but didn't feel it was the right time to publicly come out until now.

"Of course, I have a whole journey — everybody does in life," she said.

"I think the hard part is being public about it. I don’t like to be, not necessarily ‘gossiped’ about but the topic of conversations.

"It’s happening when it’s happening because that’s what feels right.

"So even though I understand there are people who think I should have done it sooner, it wasn’t right for me at the time. I have to be true to that. It’s my journey."

She said she understood that she was gay while she was a student at the University of Connecticut and it became a "nonissue."