Barry Diller opens up about his sexuality and marriage to Diane von Furstenberg in revealing memoir

In his new memoir, American businessman Barry Diller addressed for the first time decades of speculation about his sexuality and his marriage to fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Diller, the chairman and senior executive of IAC, an international media company, and chairman and senior executive of Expedia Group, an American travel company, married von Furstenberg in 2001, though their romance began more than 20 years before that, Diller wrote in an excerpt of his upcoming memoir, “Who Knew.”

In the excerpt, published Tuesday by New York magazine, Diller, 83, said he had only been interested in men until he met von Furstenberg when he was 33. 

He said von Furstenberg was dismissive of him the first time they met, but the second time, at a dinner party for a mutual friend, Diller said, “I was instantly bathed in such attention and cozy warmth I couldn’t believe it was the same woman I’d been dismissed by a year earlier,” according to the excerpt.

At that dinner party, they talked alone on a sofa, and Diller said, “There was a glow around us that was setting off sparks, accurately described by the French as a coup de foudre.”

Soon after, they had dinner at her apartment and “afterward, on the same sofa as the night before, we wound around each other, making out like teenagers, something I hadn’t done with a female since I was 16 years old,” Diller wrote. 

Diller added, “Now, this has always amazed me: There was no effort, no reasoning, no what’s-going-on-here, no ambition, no anything. Other than sheer excitement, I thought, Well, this is a surprise! I certainly didn’t feel, Oh my God, what does this mean? I was simply existing in the moment, a rare place for me.” 

Prior to meeting von Furstenberg, Diller said he had never publicly come out. He vowed to himself that he would “live with silence, but not with hypocrisy,” and “wouldn’t do a single thing to make anyone believe I was living a heterosexual life.” 

As a result, when Diller and von Furstenberg became a couple, he said people noticed. At the time, he was the chairman of Paramount Pictures and von Furstenberg was an established designer who had been on the cover of Newsweek.

“People started saying, ‘Huh? What is it with this person? We thought he liked only men,’” Diller wrote. 

However, “Much of the speculation subsided when it was clear to all we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” 

The couple dated for a few years and lived together until they separated in 1981 after von Furstenberg had an affair with actor Richard Gere, Diller wrote in his memoir. He said von Furstenberg re-entered his life 10 years later, and a decade after that, they married. 

“I’ve lived for decades reading about Diane and me: about us being best friends rather than lovers,” Diller wrote. “We weren’t just friends. We aren’t just friends. Plain and simple, it was an explosion of passion that kept up for years. And, yes, I also liked guys, but that was not a conflict with my love for Diane.”

Though the media has speculated that Diller is either gay or bisexual, he didn’t use either of those words in the excerpt. In fact, he wrote that Europeans “had a wiser attitude” about sexuality, and that today, “sexual identities are much more fluid and natural, without all those rigidly defined lanes of the last century.” 

“I’ve always thought that you never really know about anyone else’s relationships,” he wrote. “But I do know about ours. It is the bedrock of my life. What others think sometimes irritates but mostly amuses us. We know, our family knows, and our friends know. The rest is blather.”