Though they had agreed to end things, Barbara says Senator Brooke went ahead with the divorce proceedings, which generated a lot of negative publicity. Soon after, he lost his bid for re-election and his political career came to an end.

"He was a wonderful man and a wonderful senator," Barbara says. "Throughout this book, I talk about being guilty about this and being guilty about that. … I have always felt guilty that I perhaps ruined his future."

Barbara says she regrets the fact that his promising political career ended, but she doesn't regret their relationship. "It was wonderful," she says.

She may have been "the other woman" for years, but Barbara says she was never the senator's mistress. "I was supporting myself. I was working on the Today show. I had a child," she says. "Not every woman involved with a married man is a mistress."

Before her memoir hit bookstores, Barbara says she contacted Edward Brooke to let him know she was going public with their story. "He's now remarried, very happily to I hear a beautiful woman. They have a son," she says. "But I don't know what would have happened had he not met me. He might have had a whole other kind of career in the Senate."

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