Kathie Lee Gifford details final get-together with Regis Philbin

“Is that the last time I’m going to see my friend?”@KathieLGifford talks about the last time she saw Regis Philbin. pic.twitter.com/kAMHz3964U — TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 27, 2020 Kathie Lee Gifford last saw Regis Philbin just two weeks ago, in what would become her final get-together with her close friend before his death. Gifford, who worked …

“Is that the last time I’m going to see my friend?”@KathieLGifford talks about the last time she saw Regis Philbin. pic.twitter.com/kAMHz3964U
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 27, 2020

Kathie Lee Gifford last saw Regis Philbin just two weeks ago, in what would become her final get-together with her close friend before his death.

Gifford, who worked alongside Philbin from 1985 to 2000 on “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee,” said that during their recent lunch she sadly “sensed much more fragility than I’d seen in him the last time in January out in Los Angeles.”

“I was up from Tennessee, where I live most of the time, and of course the first call I always make is to Regis and Joy [Philbin],” Gifford said on Monday’s episode of the “Today” show. “I said, ‘Can we get together, can we have some lunch?’ So they came over about two weeks ago.”

Gifford, who like the Philbins also has a home in Connecticut, said, “We just had the best time. But after the Philbins left, “I just thought to myself, ‘Lord, is that the last time I’m going to see my friend?’ Cause he was failing, I could tell.”

Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee GiffordGetty Images

Then, Gifford said “something told” her the other day to return to the East Coast again.

“I got on a plane, came home, and immediately heard the news about Regis. Called Joy immediately, talked with her,” Gifford, 66, said.

Philbin died Friday of natural causes at the age of 88.

Gifford said she visited Joy, Philbin’s wife of 50 years, on Sunday, when they “reminisced for a little while.”

“I was just grateful to have the time with them, comfort them a little bit, let them know that I believe with all my heart that I know where Regis is and I know who he’s with cause I had many, many conversations with him over the years about faith, and about where we go when this life is over, and he was very curious, as always,” Gifford recounted.

Gifford added she was “just so grateful” to have that final time with Philbin.

“And it was so precious because when I talked to Joy the day that I found out right after he had passed, she said, ‘Kathie he hadn’t laughed in a long, long time.’ She said, ‘I was so worried about him,’” Gifford said.