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Oprah Flew To Hawaii to Throw Gayle King an “Almost Weight Watchers-Approved” Birthday Feast

The best friends celebrated King’s 63rd on Oprah’s Maui compound with foods like cauliflower—which, by the way, is “having a moment.”


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Juergen Teller

Gayle King has been vacationing in Maui with her children this week, which is why she ended up celebrating her 63rd birthday, on Thursday, in Hawaii. But just because she was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, her BFF Oprah Winfrey wasn’t about to let her do all the celebrating on her own; instead, she actually flew out to Maui specifically to throw a birthday dinner party for King, which she then declared in an enthusiastic Instagram to be “almost Weight Watchers-approved.”

Just because she flew in from miles and miles away doesn’t mean Oprah, who actually owns the Maui compound King was staying at, was about to skimp out any courses. Along with “Gayle’s favorite,” dover sole meunière, the dishes on the menu included butter lettuce and pear salad, glazed carrots, skillet potatoes, and truffle au gratin cauliflower. (The latter because, as the birthday girl explained, “cauliflower is having a moment.”)

Thanks to Oprah’s Instagram—yes, really the real one, for those who tuned in to her recent exuberant cybersecurity warning—we know there were even more favorites on the menu, too, including braised short ribs, which King declared “melt-in-your-mouth good.”

Weight Watchers be damned, there was also, of course, a birthday cake—and not any old cake, since in case you couldn’t tell, Oprah was pulling out all the stops. (She did, after all, cook up not one but four turkeys for her Thanksgiving dinner last month.) Last but not least was an elaborate yellow cake topped off with what was essentially a bouquet of flowers, and, of course, yellow frosting.

That’s because King “loves YELLOW!” as Oprah noted on Instagram of her best friend, who spent the night in a yellow dress—one she apparently loves so much that she wore it again the next morning when she continued the party with her children, filming a mini Taylor Swift singalong that Oprah was, very, very unfortunately, not a part of. (Though King’s video from almost exactly a year ago of Oprah taking yet another tumble in the snow definitely does help make up for that oversight.)

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