Barry Manilow has explained the maths behind decades of silence. The singer told the Los Angeles Times that coming out as gay at the height of his fame “would have killed the career” so he kept it to himself. The interview ran on 27 May 2026.
“It was a non-event. Nobody gave a shit. They all knew,” Manilow said. “I never really hid it, but in the ’70s and ’80s, that would have killed the career, and I didn’t want to do that. So I just never talked about it.”
He never denied who he was. He read the room of mainstream radio in that era and understood what being openly gay would have cost him. For fans who suspected all along, the confirmation in 2017 changed nothing.
Manilow married his longtime manager and partner, Garry Kief, in 2014, then spoke publicly three years later. At the time, he told People the fear was about letting people down. “I thought I would be disappointing them if they knew I was gay,” he said. “When they found out that Garry and I were together, they were so happy. The reaction was so beautiful.”
The candour arrives during a hard stretch. Manilow postponed his Las Vegas residency at the Westgate this month while recovering from lung cancer, the disease that took his mother. He has refused to stop.
“My mother died of lung cancer. I thought, ‘No, I’m not going to let this happen.’ And I was right,” he told The Guardian. “I don’t want to cancel this tour. So I’m going to do it whether I can sing or not!”
What stays with us at DNA is how ordinary he makes it sound. No grand reveal, no apology, just a man who waited until the industry caught up.
