Kelly Clarkson’s TV Producer Came Out at 63 with a Little Help from Her Famous Friends, Including Melissa Gilbert

Caragh Donley has spent years working in the entertainment industry, with the stories to prove it.

In the 1990s, she was a journalist for PEOPLE who covered everything from the O.J. Simpson trial to the cast of Beverly Hills, 90210. Later, she became a producer on The Queen Latifah Show and VH1’s Behind the Music and, most recently, has worked with Kelly Clarkson.

Despite her career accomplishments, there was long something “burning a hole” in Donley’s heart.

At the age of 63, she came out as transgender.

“I just had always felt this was who I was — but I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, when you did not talk about such things,” Donley, now 65, tells PEOPLE. “It just was always there.”

While Donley saw therapists over the years and fitfully went on hormone replacement therapy, she says she “probably stopped at least a dozen times, if not more,” likening her experience to “therapy roulette.” Round and round and round she went.

It wasn’t until she moved cross-country in 2023 when The Kelly Clarkson Show relocated from Los Angeles to New York that she “started life over,” she says.

While Donley says Clarkson’s choice to move her show had “nothing to do with” her own decision to come out as trans, she acknowledges “it paved the way.”

“I had to decide if I wanted to keep my job … or just stay in L.A. in my house, spending every night alone with my cat and dog, drinking myself into oblivion — or tell everyone, ‘This is me,’ and come to New York and start whatever life I have left over,” she says.

Ultimately, “it wasn’t that hard of a decision.”

“You finally see time running out,” Donley says, “and you have to take care of yourself.”

Donley credits a number of people for helping her come out, including stars like Clarkson, Dolly Parton and Sharon Stone.

She says she once nearly came out to Parton while preparing for a Kelly segment, but the country legend had to go on stage the moment Donley was about to open up.

Instead, she says, she told Robert Ramos, Clarkson’s hairstylist, first.

“Accepting help from others is very hard, and I couldn’t have done it without all the help I’ve gotten from everybody,” Donley says. “I sound way too dreamy, way too Pollyanna. But this can be a wonderful world if we let it, and I am busy letting it be that.”

As someone with decades of experience in Hollywood, Donley had plenty of famous cheerleaders supporting her transition, including one very special figure from her childhood.

In late 2023, she recounted in a Huffington Post essay how she’d had a recurring dream as a child in which she would play with Bewitched‘s Tabitha (Erin Murphy) after eating a special potion that made her into a girl. And then Donley received an Instagram private message from Murphy herself.

“The whole point of the dream was we were gonna have a play date,” Donley says. “So her message ended with, ‘When are we going to have that play date?’ “

Donley also detailed in the Huffington Post how Stone, 67, helped spark her later-in-life coming out with an emphasis on “living authentically and without regret.”

After their conversation — which was part of Donley’s producer work on Kelly — and her public coming out, Donley says she’s heard from Stone, who “seemed immensely happy about it.”

“I don’t know where I would probably be without Sharon Stone,” she says of the Oscar nominee.

Donley has been with Kelly since Clarkson’s very first season, but she previously worked for PEOPLE as associate bureau chief in Los Angeles in the ’90s, during which time she rode in a cab with Jennifer Aniston, hung out with Will Smith right after he landed The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, spent the night on top of a mountain with Jon Bon Jovi and even sat in the living room of a juror’s family from the Simpson trial as the verdict was being read.

While interviewing the late Shannen Doherty for a PEOPLE cover story, Donley spent the day with the then-90210 star only to arrive back at Doherty’s house to find her front door was “wide open” and “a trail of blood” was leading through her home and to the swimming pool.

“She had a complete and total panic attack,” remembers Donley, who had to light Doherty’s cigarette for her and went through her contacts making calls to try and figure out what happened.

Thankfully, nobody was seriously harmed; Doherty’s dog had fallen into her pool and scraped its paws trying to get out. When Doherty’s dad came by, he saw the pet and took it to the vet for care.

“Seeing Shannen in that moment — and people could say whatever they want about her — but she was so human and vulnerable, and I loved and adored her,” Donley says.

These days, she’s close with Melissa Gilbert — who drove her to surgery during her transition and brought Donley “three different Italian dinners” after her procedure — as well as Patricia Clarkson and David Duchovny, both of whom helped with Donley’s one-woman show, He Said, She Says, which won the audience award at New York City’s Fringe Festival and features music from Heart’s Nancy Wilson.

She’s also grateful for her relationship with Clarkson, 43, whom she describes as “an angel who walks amongst us.”

When Donley came out to Clarkson as trans, “she and her whole team could not have been more welcoming and understanding,” Donley says.

She then joined Clarkson and Laverne Cox for a 2023 Kelly segment, which aired as part of an hourlong episode devoted to trans issues produced by Donley.

“It’s still hard to believe that happened,” Donley tells PEOPLE, but adds, “It’s maybe the most meaningful thing I’ve ever done in my career.”

Now Donley wants to become “America’s friendly neighborhood trans lady,” showing people they don’t need to be “afraid of the fifth Golden Girl,” as she jokingly calls herself.

“So many people have to stay stealth, or they’re not able to express themselves for whatever reason. I have absolutely nothing to lose,” she says. “That’s the biggest advantage of coming out at this age.”

“I’ll talk to anyone at any time to show them that a trans person is just as normal and boring as anyone else,” she adds.

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Donley tells PEOPLE she has “no regrets.”

“I couldn’t be more thrilled. My kids couldn’t be happier. They’re my rock. They support me,” she says of her two grown children, a son and daughter. (She’s been divorced for nearly 20 years.)

“It’s amazing,” she says, “to realize you can change your life at 65.”