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Barbara Walters: “I Could Have Been Mrs. Clint Eastwood!”

Barbara Walters: “I Could Have Been Mrs. Clint Eastwood!”
Barbara Walters told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show that she once had the opportunity to date Clint Eastwood. Dave Allocca/Starpix/Shutterstock

She could have been a reality star! Barbara Walters revealed on the Tonight Show Wednesday, June 11, that she “could have been Mrs. Clint Eastwood.”

“This is a sad love story,” Walters, 84, told Jimmy Fallon. “I did this interview with Clint Eastwood something like 30 years ago. He was very flirtatious, and I was very taken [with him].” The veteran journalist, who retired last month, confessed: “He asked me if I wanted to have dinner, and I said, ‘No, I have to work.’ You know, I don’t mix business with pleasure.”

“I could have been Mrs. Clint Eastwood!” she said, processing the memory.

Like Eastwood, Walters later got married—to three different men, in fact, including two marriages, and two divorces from longtime on-and-off flame Merv Adelson, Lee Guber, and Robert Henry Katz. While the twice-divorced Million Dollar Baby director married his second wife Dina Eastwood in 1996. The two separated last August.

Related: PHOTOS: Celebrity splits of 2014

Alas, the divorced stars met again many, many years later, most recently on the red carpet of Jersey Boys. “I thought maybe it’s not too late,” she told Fallon. “I’m not kidding. I really did. I put on the right outfit. The false eyelashes… the whole thing.” Added Walters of their red carpet reunion: “What’s that expression? He was just not [that] into me.”

Fallon, though, consoled Walters over her lost love. “You don’t need him anyway!” he said.

Related: PHOTOS: Biggest talk show controversies ever

An observer at the Jersey Boys screening held Monday, June 9, gave Us some additional details on Eastwood and Walters’ run-in. “The two said a very warm hello and peeled off a few feet from the press line, where they chatted for 10 minutes.”

Added the eyewitness: “They looked like they had a nice rapport and appeared to be old friends. He was holding one of her hands in his for the majority of the time they talked.”

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