Barbara Walters

NEW YORK - After three decades of silence, Barbara Walters now says she was in a previous relationship with the United States he married Senator Edward Brooke, who remembers as "exciting" and "great".

Appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" Tuesday is scheduled to air, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a copy of the offer to The Associated Press.

, A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first popularly elected African-American to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of the relationship between them has destroyed his career as well as hers, Walters says.

At the time, and Walters, who was divorced twice a rising star in TV news and participated in a range of NBC program "Today," but would soon jump to ABC News, where she has enjoyed unrivaled success. And had a relationship with Brooke, which never before came to light, ended before he lost his attempt for a third term in 1978.

Brooke divorced later and married since then. Were not calls to the list to Brooke in Miami by The Associated Press immediately returned Thursday.

Walters and Oprah Winfrey's guest to discuss the new memoir "test", which covers her long in television, as well as her life away from the camera. On "Oprah," Walters recounts a phone call from a friend who urged them to stop seeing Brooke.

"He said: 'This is going to go out, and this is going to ruin your career," then reminded her that Brooke is due for re-election the following year. "'This is going to ruin him. You have to break this out."

Winfrey asks Walters if they were in love.

"I was certainly _ I do not know _ and I'm definitely intrigued."

"Mesmerized."

"I certainly involved," says Walters. "It was exciting, and it was wonderful, and the exciting times in Washington."

Also during this program, even chokes and Walters while describing the struggles of her older sister Jackie, who was mentally retarded. Walters acknowledges that, as a child, she felt embarrassed by Jackie in some cases.

"She stuttered terribly, and people make fun of her, and people laugh at me," says Walters. "I did not bring friends home, and I felt guilty because she was very loving awesome and I did not always feel this way."

Jackie Walters died in 1985 of ovarian cancer.

"When I think about it, because it was beautiful and the love of all that, it makes me cry."

Brooke served two full terms 1967-1979, taking into populist reasons for the low-income housing, and increase the minimum wage and mass transit. Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, an honor only 21 U.S. senators have received.