Supported by

The “CBS Mornings” anchor Gayle King had just started a live interview with two cover stars of the 2024 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue on Tuesday when she received a bombshell on air: The new swimsuit issue, which marks the publication’s 60th anniversary, has a cover with Ms. King posing in a bathing suit, too.

“It’s not a dummy cover? This is going to be on the newsstands? Oh my God! Oh my God!” a beaming Ms. King cried after the model Kate Upton, her fellow cover star, handed her a copy of the magazine showing Ms. King posing in a colorful printed Evarae one-piece and matching cover-up beneath the Sports Illustrated logo.

Ms. King, 69, whose solo cover portrait was photographed in Cancún, Mexico, in December, explained during the TV segment that she had thought the picture would appear on inside pages.

Though Ms. King and several other women were also photographed in evening wear for a group cover of this year’s swimsuit issue, getting her own cover along with models like Ms. Upton, Chrissy Teigen and Hunter McGrady came as a shock — especially considering that Ms. King had thought “somebody was playing a joke” when she was initially approached to appear in the publication, she said in an interview on Wednesday.

“I was actually on the fence when they first asked me,” Ms. King said, adding that MJ Day, the editor of the swimsuit issue, helped persuade her to participate after explaining that the focus of this year’s edition was on legacy, longevity and women who were at the very top of their careers.