The 90 days that shook women’s tennis arrived with little warning in the late spring of 1981. Billie Jean King, the tour’s iconic founder along with eight other women a decade earlier, had just been eliminated in the first round of a tournament outside Orlando. She had no idea that a maelstrom was about to engulf her until the next day, when she returned to her hotel after an outing and found stacks of phone messages waiting for her. That’s how she learned Marilyn Barnett, a former girlfriend, had outed her in a Los Angeles court filing on April 30, 1981, and was now suing her for financial support.
Martina Navratilova, then only 24, did have some advance knowledge her personal life was about to become a story, too. When a reporter for the New York Daily News asked Navratilova for her reaction to King being outed, Navratilova confided to him during the interview that she identified as bisexual but didn’t feel she could publicly admit she was in a relationship with a woman because the WTA Tour could lose its major sponsorship with Avon, and perhaps others.
Navratilova’s U.S. citizenship was still pending as well, and she also feared that being openly gay would be a disqualifier. The reporter initially granted Navratilova’s request to not publish the story, but just days after she received her citizenship, the Daily News decided to run an article after all on July 30, 1981. The headline: “Martina fears Avon’s call if she talks.”
Two of biggest stars in women’s tennis had now been outed in three months.
At the remove of 40 years, and in an era where June is now designated and celebrated around the world as LGBTQ+ Pride Month, the details of the damage and recrimination that King and Navratilova initially faced still pack a strong emotional punch. It was the price they paid for being pioneers.
The evening Barnett’s suit became public, King’s publicist issued a blanket denial refuting all of the claims in Barnett’s lawsuit as King was flying that night back to New York. King was so upset the release was issued without her final approval, she insisted on calling a press conference in Los Angeles two days later, against the protests of her attorney and agent, because, as King says now, “I was determined to tell the truth.”
“I did have an affair with Marilyn Barnett – it’s been over for quite some time” King told a packed room of stunned reporters as her husband, Larry King, sat to her right…