Every Monday morning, Melinda French Gates has her calendar blocked to walk with her three closest female friends.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky to have three female friends now for over 30 years,” French Gates told Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King in an interview posted to her YouTube channel ahead of turning 60 last year. “If you’re in town, you walk.”
In celebration of hitting the 60-milestone, French Gates, whose company Pivotal Ventures supports organizations and individuals at the forefront of gender equity, sat down with King and Winfrey for her series called “Moments That Make Us” to talk about the pearls of aging—and the power of female friendship. King and Winfrey have been friends for 50 years after meeting in Baltimore when 22-year-old Winfrey was the anchor and offered 21-year-old King a job as a production assistant. They told French Gates their lives would be wildly different if it weren’t for having each other’s ongoing support, which has taken them through job changes and King’s divorce.
“She fills a role for me that is as solid as mothering or sistering or anything could be,” Winfrey, age 71, said of King, age 70.
Winfrey, at age 30, recalls being reluctant to take a new opportunity in Chicago. “Gayle was the only person who said, ‘I think you could do it,’” she said, praising King for believing in her potential. “The reasons why I think our friendship has worked is because Gayle is happier—not happy but happier—for me for any kind of success or victory or challenge I get through than I am for myself,” Winfrey said in the interview. King shared the same sentiment, saying she would not have been at CBS or the Met Gala if it weren’t for this friendship.
As for French Gates and her closest friends: “They are my truth council. Whenever I’m going to make a really hard decision or make a big transition, I know I have to have the courage to tell them…and they’re honest with me,” she said.
The powerhouse trio is on to something, because the longest study on happiness to date underscores how the strength of our relationships is the biggest determinant of our happiness at the end of our life. Further, people are craving connection, and while it can be harder to maintain friendships in midlife, it’s imperative for our well-being amid an ongoing loneliness epidemic. In conjunction with diminishing happiness potential, social isolation puts people at risk for dementia and chronic conditions like heart disease.
Strong friendships persist when both parties are supportive and encouraging of the other, can lend a helpful perspective, and don’t fall into patterns of jealousy or competition, Winfrey said. And it doesn’t matter how many people you know because even one close friend is enough.
The importance of having a support system became most apparent for French Gates during her 2021 much-publicized divorce from Bill Gates—calling the time “unbelievably painful.”
“I would not have gotten through my divorce without my three closest friends. There’s no chance,” said French Gates in the interview, who said she told her trio of confidants about her relationship struggles right as she thought about them herself.
“You actually need a friend who will tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. I’ll say about my friends, they have a perspective on me, and I have a perspective on them,” she said. “When you have a longtime friendship, you’ve kind of seen it all with the other person.”
What makes King and Winfrey’s friendship so strong? “We had very like philosophies about people. We were so in sync about so many things,” King said, who adds that she would never make a major life decision without getting advice from Winfrey. “And philosophies about approaching life,” Winfrey said.
Having close friendships as we age not only strengthens our physical and mental health but helps us reframe what it means to get older, encouraging us to make bold transitions, to follow our gut, and to continue to grow, Winfrey and King note.
“Love helps you blossom and helps you flourish and helps you be the best of yourself,” Winfrey said, who encourages people to pay attention to the whispers life sends you to move you in the right direction and surround yourself with your “walking cabinet” of friends to lean on in times of need. “If you are paying attention to your life, life only gets better.”
For French Gates, she feels like life is just getting started in her sixties—and her weekly morning walks will continue to be a staple of this new decade.
“Women used to not talk about their age as if we should be ashamed to be our age. But I’m really proud that I’m about to turn 60,” French Gates said. “Shouldn’t we celebrate? I hope by this age we have some wisdom, right? We don’t talk about the importance of deep, deep female friendship.”
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on July 26, 2024.
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