Recap of Elizabeth Edwards interview on Oprah

If you missed Oprah's interview with Elizabeth Edwards today, we've recapped it here for you.

Oprah arrives at the Edwards home in Chapel Hill in an SUV and is greeted outside by the entire family, minus Cate: John, Elizabeth, Emma Claire, and Jack. Big hugs all around.

Oprah notes that Elizabeth looks good, though she has terminal cancer. They go into the house and John takes the kids away. "Can we talk to you later on?" Oprah asks. "We'll see," John replies.

In a taped voiceover, Oprah recounts the tabloid reports of John's affair with Rielle Hunter.

The interview begins, and Oprah asks Elizabeth to talk about the "one gift" she asked of John when they married -- that he be faithful. She said she has never been into jewelry and can't even wear her wedding ring now because of a "jammed finger," but that she asked John for his faithfulness and he "willingly said yes." She talked about her father's infidelity to her mother and how it harmed her mother's self-confidence.

Elizabeth tells the story -- as it was told to her by John -- of how he and Rielle Hunter met. Rielle spotted him in a hotel, and after confirming with an aide that it was him, she waited outside the hotel so that she could tell him, "You are so hot." 

Oprah helps Elizabeth with her delivery of the "You are so hot" line, which was pretty flat. Elizabeth laughs and admits she probably said it differently, but didn't want to get into that. She does say that she would have suspected "John would have run" if someone had said that to him. She says women came on to John before and would hand him their phone numbers in rope lines, which he would hand off to aides. 

Elizabeth says that two days after John announced he was running for president, he told her that he had a single encounter with Hunter. He said she was out of his life and that he regretted it, but that it was only one time.

"It leveled me," Elizabeth said. She said she eventually became able to manage it, understanding that no one is perfect.

She asked John to get out of the campaign, for their family, but he pointed out that if you want to raise questions, get out of a campaign two days after you enter it. She agreed.

Oprah tells Elizabeth that she's a smart woman, and asks her if she was afraid it would all come out? Elizabeth responds that she was "enormously afraid of that."

Oprah asked her if she was being honest while she was campaigning for John, and Elizabeth says that she changed the way she talked about him. She was still angry and hurt, she said, and had a lot of self-doubt about what she (Elizabeth) meant to him.

Oprah asks if she believes this is the only woman John has ever had an affair with, and Elizabeth says "Yes, I believe that ... I want to believe that" -- but she says she did eventually learn that it was not the only time with Hunter. 

Elizabeth said that about a year and a half after John told her there had been one encounter with Hunter, he confessed that it had gone on longer.  

Oprah plays tape of John denying the affair, and then last summer, admitting to the affair on Nightline.

Elizabeth recounts the now-famous information that she got physically sick ("I threw up") when first learning about that first encounter. Though there were rumors of it being more than one instance, Elizabeth said she didn't hear them. "Nobody told me anything." 

Elizabeth said "it felt like a blow for me" and that it was like starting over again from a worse position. She didn't think John would go see her again, and it meant that the trust they  had built over the last year and a half had been pushed back even further.

"That's the part we're still working on -- lack of trust."

Elizabeth said she is a "puzzle-doer" and several times compared her efforts to learn more about the affair to putting the pieces of a puzzle together, trying to understand how it all happened. 

Oprah asked if she asked John if he loved Rielle Hunter. Elizabeth said, "I'm sure I asked that, but it seemed impossible to me," noting how different she and Hunter are. 

Oprah asked when she knew that she was going to stay with John, and she answered that she didn't know right away, that she had to talk to him and scream at him face-to-face first, and that there were lots of discussions about what to do.

Oprah reads a quote from the book. "The way we were is no longer the way we can be."

Elizabeth says she was always a pretty self-confident person. "I look like I look," she said, adding that she has always struggled with her weight ("Hello sister," Oprah offers.). She says she began questioning whether or not she "looked awful at home," and that there was a lot of questioning about what it was about herself that caused the affair to happen. She eventually came to the conclusion that it was "not about me, never about me."

Elizabeth says as far as why her husband had the affair, she believes he had an opportunity and it didn't seem like there would be consequences.

Oprah asks her about the worst moment and she says learning of the single indiscretion and then learning that it happened more than once "compete for worst moment."

Then Oprah asks about Hunter's baby. Basically, Elizabeth says whatever happens with that, it doesn't change her life.  "It doesn't make any difference to me, whether the child is or isn't. If we discover it is, that's part of John's life, not mine."

Oprah asks doesn't she want to know? Elizabeth: "It doesn't change anything." 

Elizabeth says that John claims to know nothing about the paternity of the child. "You could easily find out," Oprah presses, and Elizabeth reiterates that it wouldn't change her life unless John were interested in starting a family with Hunter, but she doesn't think that is the case.

Elizabeth says she has seen Hunter one time but never met her. Hunter was apparently at a rally in Chapel Hill and walked by Elizabeth and her family. 

Elizabeth says she blames John for the affair, but railed against women who target married men. "Women need to have respect for other women." Elizabeth said there is no excuse for women to go after married men. "Don't try to come in and take someone else's life," she said. 

As far as rebuilding trust, Elizabeth said John is forced to have "a lot of conversations he doesn't want to have" because she's still putting those puzzle pieces together.

Oprah asks her if she thinks she'd have made a different decision about staying with John if she weren't sick, and Elizabeth says she isn't going to let this affair define her life. She says John has been good to her when she has been sick and when she was hurting over the loss of their son, Wade. "If you take that piece out [the affair]," she said, "we do have a perfect marriage." 

When learning of the affair, Elizabeth said her first reaction was to protect John -- and all of the family -- and to try to come out of it okay. Oprah addresses the rumors that John has moved out of their home. "I saw him in the kitchen," Oprah said, indicating that she believes he lives there. Elizabeth said his clothes are in the closet and that he does live there.

When Oprah asks if she still loves her husband, Elizabeth says, "It's complicated ... I wouldn't be here if I didn't love him."

Oprah reads another excerpt from Elizabeth's book Resilience, remarking that the book is "beautifully written." The excerpt she reads includes a passage about accepting a new reality. Elizabeth says she believes you have to "stop resisting change and make the best of what you have right now."

As far as the children, Elizabeth said they "pretty much know what's happened." They have computers, she said, and they understand, but that her terminal cancer is "a bigger thing in their lives than this woman passing through."

Oprah points out that her diagnosis of cancer would have been a good opportunity for them to pull out of the campaign, but Elizabeth says at that point, she thought it had only been a single night, not an on-going affair. She said she is still taking chemo, and isn't in any pain. 

Elizabeth told Oprah she has no idea what her prognosis is, that doctors told her it could be a year or 10 years. She says she does think about it. When she feels a pain, she wonders, "is this the beginning of the end? That's when I get really down" -- thinking about what's left undone and who will be left behind. But she says that "death looks different to someone who has put a child in the ground." There's a bit of relief, she says.

She said that Emma Claire recently learned that romaine lettuce is good for cancer and asked her if she ate romaine lettuce. "That made me sad," she said. "She's 10 and she needs to be 10." She says her children know more about the cancer than she tells them.

Then Oprah gets a tour of their home. There's a long hallway that leads to their barn, and the walls are lined with family photos and momentos. This is their indoor dog run. 

They run into John in this section of the house, and he shows Oprah the gym (a nicer gym than you see in most high schools) where he played basketball with Barack Obama. 

Oprah asks him what he thinks of Elizabeth's book. He describes it as "thoughtful and heartfelt." Oprah asks if he prefers that she had not written it, had not dredged all this back up again. He said that was "up to her" and that he thinks the book is "how she feels." 

Oprah asks John if they are in a good place now, and he says they are "getting to a good place."

Oprah asks him if he thought Elizabeth would leave him when she learned of the affair, and he says he didn't know what she would do, but that he was afraid that she might.

"Yeah, I love her and I care about her," he said.