In an hourlong ABC interview with Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey again denies any sort of romantic relationship with BFF Gayle King.

"Describe that friendship to me," Walters says.

After a long pause, an emotional Winfrey answers: "She is ... the mother I never had. She is ... the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person. I don't know a better person."

Choking back tears and eventually beginning to cry, Oprah continues: "It's making me cry because I'm thinking about ... how much ... I probably have never told her that."

See the interview clip and hear O's exact words on the lesbian rumors after the jump.
Walters says the sit-down with Winfrey is, "Probably the most personal interview I've seen her do. I've never seen her quite as revealing throughout the interview."

Despite the emotional and personal nature of the conversation, Oprah remains as pointed as ever in her speech. "I have said we are not gay enough times. I'm not lesbian ... I'm not even kinda lesbian," Winfrey says. "And the reason why it irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I'm lying. That's number one. Number two, why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life."

Winfrey also talks candidly about her relationship with businessman and entrepreneur Stedman Graham. The two became a couple in 1986, were engaged in 1992, and, according to Barbara Walters, are still very much an item.

"Every time we showed up in public... there'd be another exploitive story," Oprah says. "So I made a conscious effort around 2003, 2004, to pull back on my public appearances with Stedman."

Describing live-in significant other Stedman, Winfrey deems him: "The love ... the lover ... the man ... the partner ... the mate ... I do not know of another man on this planet who could have lived this life with such dignity, with such grace and such respect and humility in it. And still hold his own and be his own."

Winfrey also speaks about never having children and fears about starting her own network, the impetus for her concluding 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' after this season, the 25th for the daily talk show.