Happy birthday to Sam Champion!

Weather Channel anchor Sam Champion says he was never really in the closet but it wasn’t until his final year on ABC’s Good Morning America that he shared the news with viewers.

Sam, who turns 53 today, had good reason for wanting to be more open: he had become engaged to Rubem Robierb.

He talks to “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” about how when he first came out to his family, his dad was not supportive.”

“I always felt like I was a little disappointing to him. [He was] 6’4″, Marine Corps colonel, all these great guy things. I just didn’t have any of that.”

“I remember him saying to me, ‘I cannot support this lazy lifestyle choice,'” he recalls. “I’m like, ‘You’re the smartest guy I know. You sound so incredibly dumb right now. You knew I was different from the time I was a kid. I was just different. I would not choose this. I would not!'”

The two were able to talk things out and reconcile before his father’s death in 2010.

“I remember standing on the back deck of their house in Texas, and he reached out and touched me and he said, ‘I’m so proud of the man that you became,'” Champion says. “That’s my favorite minute with my dad.”