‘Tim Cook’s coming out publicly will be the door opener for a lot of other people that so want to come out but they’re just afraid to do so,’ Orman tells CNN.

While Orman is now one of the most well-known lesbians in the US, she was not ready to be outed publicly in 2007 in an article that appeared in The New York Times Magazine and didn’t like the way it all went down.

‘The interview was really supposed to be about my book that was coming out called Women and Money which was a really important book. Now (writer Deborah Soloman is) announcing to everybody that I’m gay and what I didn’t want was for people to think that I had staged that! I didn’t want them to think that it was a marketing thing.’

Orman says she never thought that she was in the closet and had only ever been with a woman.

Still, she had never been asked about it publicly even as her profile rose with a series of best selling books and her own television show on CNBC.

‘I was always afraid of that reporter asking me the question outright – are you gay? And then I would have to answer it because, how would I know how everybody would respond to that?

‘So on some level she did me the biggest favor in my life because it was after that article came out that I was able to stand in my truth in my own power and I became even more successful than I had been prior to that.’

Orman hopes the same for Cook.

‘He’s going to feel more powerful,’ she predicts. ‘A more powerful person is a better leader, a better leader makes a better company, and I hope it shows up one day in Apple’s performance.’

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