Watch: Barry Manilow Explains His Late-in-Life Coming Out

Barry Manilow told HBO's Chris Wallace that his coming out at age 73 – three years after he married longtime partner and manager Gary Kief in 2014 – happened so late because "it was just too personal," HuffPost reported.

"Wallace broached the subject by asking if the 'Mandy' singer's sexuality was why his first marriage to his high school sweetheart didn't last," HuffPost narrated.

Asked by Wallace how "Barry Pincus" – Manilow's birth name – came to marry a woman, the pop star recalled, "Music did it," but, he added, the life of an ambitious young performer wasn't compatible with marriage.

"We had a very nice marriage – it was great – but I was away every night making music, as a young musician would be," Manilow, now 80 years old, said. "And... it wasn't good for me, and it wasn't good for her. I couldn't be the proper husband."

"At that point did you know you were gay?" Wallace asked.

"Yeah – oh, we all do. I knew when I was five years old or something," Manilow replied. "I was very happy being married, and I really did love her, but the gay thing was, uh, pretty – pretty strong... I couldn't deny it."

The conversation turned to Manilow and Kief meeting in 1978, and their current status as a married couple.

"I understand everyone's coming out story is different," Wallace said, "but you didn't officially announce all this until 2017 and I, and I wonder why it took so long."

"It was a non-event for me, really," Manilow disclosed. "Gary and I have been together for so long, you know, it just never dawned on me that we're going to come out."

"But when we got married in it was a big deal," Manilow went on to say. He said his husband had "saved my life," recalling that "as my career exploded... it was just crazy. And, you know, going back to a, an empty hotel room, you can get into a lot of trouble if you, if you're alone night after night after night."

The pop star continued: "I met Gary right around when it was exploding, and I didn't have to go back to those empty hotel rooms. I had somebody to cry with or to celebrate with."

Manilow's career took off in the 1970s, when being openly gay "wasn't the same as it is today."

"Now being gay is no big deal," Manilow noted. "But back in the '70s, it would have killed a career." The legend added that Arista Records founder and president Clive Davis "kind of told me that in his own way, 'Don't do that.'"

Besides, Manilow went on to add, "it was just too personal. I just didn't want to talk about my personal life anyway. I never did that. I was happy talking about music. But talking about my personal life was just kind of creepy to me. So I never did."

Watch an excerpt from the interview below.