Keith Olbermann Details His Life Dating Olivia Nuzzi: 'We Had Dogs, Tattoos & Rings'

Just when you thought the Olivia Nuzzi-RFK Jr. sexting scandal had run out of steam, along comes the Keith Olbermann angle.

On the Tuesday episode of the "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" podcast, the former ESPN SportsCenter great, who now spends his time as a recluse in his NYC apartment yelling at OutKick founder Clay Travis, and others on Twitter, detailed the time when he dated Nuzzi. 

Olbermann was 55 when he was dating then 21-year-old Nuzzi, who was an up-and-coming journalist. Hey, as Keith, now 65, says in his podcast, she likes older men. Keith, at the time, was more than happy to be that older man. 

(Keith Olbermann was 55 when he was living with then 21-year-old Olivia Nuzzi, who is now at the center of the RFK Jr. sexting drama. / Getty Images)

Why is Nuzzi, now 31, important to the current news cycle? She has been placed on leave by New York magazine after a "probe" found that she had been engaged in a personal relationship with RFK Jr. while reporting on the campaign he was running. 

In stories like this one with salacious red meat, news outlets start digging to expand a story. The New York Post dug up news that Nuzzi and Olbermann dated, which then led to Keith telling his stories of life with the woman who has the gossip world buzzing. 

From Olbermann's podcast: 

Literally, when the RFK Junior Olivia Newsy relationship story broke, I thought, uh, here we go. Eventually and inevitably, this story will get around to me because long ago she and I lived together. We had dogs and tattoos and rings, and like all relationships, it was very nice at the start. 

Then things happened and we worked on it and it ended. One day I said, I think we've exhausted this, and I changed my mind. Then, like the next day, she left, so I guess that makes it a tie. 

It's a while ago. 

She had a clothes closet in my apartment, and I meant what I said here about things I promised not to tell. Because when this story broke, I decided, if nobody asks, I'm not volunteering this. 

It's difficult to be even the most marginal public figure and keep any part of your life private, and nobody knows that better now than does Olivia. On the other hand, if I'm asked about this by the media, if somebody is going to write it, I'm not lying to them. 

I'm not denying it. I'm also not giving them the story, especially not the freaking New York Post which reached out yesterday. I confirmed we dated. That's what he asked, ‘Did you date her?’ And I said yes, And I said I thought it was pretty general knowledge that we had dated, but that nobody cared, and that if they didn't know this well, the paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle writing Sherlock Holmes's lines for him, I am not retained by the gossip columnists to supply their deficiencies. 

In other words, I am not the newsy nudes news network over here giving away free stories. Plus, seriously, nearly all of the relationship was surprisingly mundane, and it doesn't have anything to do with the RFK story except in the broadest possible sense. 

I mean, I'm sure she's not a completely different person than she was when we dated, but maybe? 

I am left with a couple of overarching thoughts. She did some weird things during the three and a half years this lasted. 

I'm sure I did two. 

She played around at one point with how to pronounce her last name. What sounded best professionally. And her parents were not the best role models.

And on the other hand, after the immediate and understandable astonishment on their part, they did a 180 about me. I went to their house for Christmas every year. Her mom used to dog sit for us. Her dad and I went to a Stanley Cup Finals game and had coffee a lot. 

Though, sometimes she so missed the mark on the consequences of her actions that nobody around her would have said anything except, ‘How could you not know that?’ 

Like the time long after we broke up, that she went to Corey Lewandowski's house and he didn't answer, so she just turned the handle on the front door, and it was unlocked, and so she just walked in and didn't know that was unethical and probably illegal, and then made that story public. 

But nothing I know about her then or now suggests Olivia would have kept sending a guy nude photos unless he wanted them. I haven't talked with her since we broke up because nowadays you're supposed to ghost each other, I guess. 

But for whatever it's worth, I can't defend any of her journalistic choices here and I will not. But in the metaview of who's right, who's wrong here, she's not the one who's wrong here. 

And of course, if you are a faithful listener, it will have dawned on you that all the times I have talked about my beloved dog Stevie, my other dogs, the ex-girlfriend with whom I walked into the pet shop because her family dog was dying, and she needed a puppy fix, that was Olivia. 

She took care of me that fateful day when we got Stevie, and she and I devoted our lives to Stevie. And Olivia largely taught me how to successfully be adopted by a dog and all dogs, and the anniversary of that is next Monday.

And all my other dogs, and my late rescues Mishu and Mi Nay, and all my work with dogs and animal groups, that all comes from her. So that's the bottom line. Whatever else this is, Olivia is responsible for me being born again in dogs. 

She will always have my support if she needs it; though not the journalistic choices part. Maybe that is all I will ever say again about her. Maybe developments will warrant more details, but for now I don't think they will. But from the department of Keith cannot possibly leave well enough alone, that does not mean I'm not going to make a couple of jokes about this, and maybe not just in this episode. 

Joke number one about the ethics of me dating her at my age: I don't want to go out on a limb here, but I am beginning to suspect she likes all old guys. I mean, she was going to marry one who was twenty years older than her. 

Also, I'm old. 

On the other hand, I'm not as old as Bobby Kennedy. I win. Son of a Bitch is five years older than I am.

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Items to note from Keith's podcast:

1. Nuzzi's father, whom Olbermann calls "not the best role model," died in 2015. 
2. It's unclear which tattoo Olivia is responsible for on Keith's body, but we do know he has dogs tatted on him. Here are two of those tattoos. "I've seen better tattoos done in prison," one Internet observer says of an Olbermann tat.
3. Nuzzi was engaged to journalist Ryan Lizza before the RFK Jr. news broke. Lizza is the guy who is 20 years older than Nuzzi that Olbermann mentions. While Keith mentions he and Nuzzi had "rings," there's no indication they were engaged.