Jack Welch: 'I Fell In Love'

Jack And Suzy Welch Tell Their Story To Dan Rather

(CBS)  Suzy Welch decided she could live with that situation, being involved with someone else’s husband. But she couldn’t live with a professional dilemma. "The complicating factor, and it was a major complicating factor, was that we had an interview that was about to run with my name on it with Jack," she says.

She also says she was worried about the ethical questions that would come into play with that: "That's why I picked up the phone and called my boss, and said, 'We have to pull the Jack Welch interview. I’ve become romantically involved.'"

The article was pulled, and reassigned to other reporters, who conducted a new interview with the former GE chairman. That article was published the next year, and Suzy Welch resigned as editor.

Why did this story become such a media event? "Can you think of anything better? Here's the cake, OK, the cake that Suzy talks about making all the time. We got the editor of the Harvard Business Review, America's most prestigious sort of intellectual business magazine. We got a well-known CEO who had received a lot of accolades from the most admired company with the highest market value," says Welch.

"And the guy is married. He falls in love. He runs off with the woman. Christ, if I was a journalist, I'd write a scandalous story. It's a pretty good story. I mean, it's a good story. But I don't care. I fell in love."

"This is not my usual kind of question," says Rather to Welch. "But when you first told your wife what you just told me, and under the Jack Welch total candor, I'm assuming you told her? … Told her straight out?"

"I did," says Welch.

"And what did she say," asks Rather.

"Can we shut it down now," says Welch.

Of all the questions that 60 Minutes Wednesday asked Welch, that was the only one he couldn’t answer. Part of his divorce agreement with his former wife is that he can’t talk about it.

How hard was it for Suzy Welch to deal with some of the headlines? "It was shocking," she says. "And it was such, it felt like I was reading about someone else. I didn't – who they were talking about."

Did she regret getting into this relationship?

"You know, I never said that. I never said it," says Suzy Welch. "And I thought, 'This has got to pass. Because people have got to have better things to do in their life than read about this.'"

What was the worst of it for Welch? "Seeing her [Suzy] beat up because of this," he says. "Because I've been prince to pig, at least four times in my career. You know, neutron to guru, to genius, to bum. It happens. That's what happens in the CEO's career in 21 years."

So what is Welch really like?

"He's warm. He's funny. He's interesting at every moment. He's caring," says Suzy Welch.

"I love you," Welch says to Suzy. "No one's ever said so many nice things."

"I love you, too," says Suzy, to Welch.

"You know, those kinds of things that people say about Jack," she tells Rather, "I have a big disconnect with them."