This time last year, Kathie Lee Gifford had just heard the news that her longtime friend, Billy Graham, had gone home to be with the Lord.
The tears would come, but her initial reaction was to praise God.
“I just immediately put up my hands and said, ‘Thank You. Thank You,’” she shared on the Today show hours after Mr. Graham passed away.
Then she honored the “Evangelist to the World” in the one way he would have desired most: she preached the Gospel.
“Everybody that dies in Christ goes immediately into the arms of Christ for eternity,” she shared with a live studio audience—and millions of others watching live on TV or online in the following weeks and months.
“That is the hope of the Christian faith—yes, it gives us the tools we need to live in the world today while we’re alive—but that’s why I could hold my dead husband in my arms and rejoice. Because I knew where he was.”
Gifford didn’t stop there. In her tribute to Mr. Graham—who was known for boldly preaching the Gospel around the world—she went on to explain why she, too, is bold in sharing her faith.
“If you had the cure for cancer, would you keep it quiet, or would you hold it and keep it a secret?” she asked. “I have the cure for the malignancy of the soul, and He has a name, and it’s Jesus.
“Use this opportunity to look into your own heart—every one of us should—and say, ‘Do I have a malignancy of my soul? Where’s the doctor?’ Well, the Good News is the doctor is in, and He conquered death for all time for every one of us. And it’s free—probably the only thing in this whole world we live in that’s completely free.”
‘Nobody Ever Will Be Like Billy’
One year later, Gifford took time to speak with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association about her friendship with Billy Graham and his ongoing legacy for Christ.
“Nobody ever will be like Billy,” she said. “God just ordained that he would be that man—His man—to proclaim the Gospel, and I doubt any other human being will ever reach as many people personally.”
God used Mr. Graham to reach not only Gifford but also her closest family members in a personal way. When she was a girl, she came home one night to find her mother and sister crying in front of the television after watching a Billy Graham Crusade.
“I walked in thinking they were reacting to bad news on the television, but it was the opposite of that,” she said. “They were reacting to the Good News on the TV. The Good News that God loved my mother and sister. They were just rejoicing in their newfound faith in Jesus.
“Every member of my family … was impacted by [Billy Graham’s] ministry.”