Gayle King described her shock at the suicide of her friend Cheslie Kryst: 'You never really know what's going on in people's lives'

• CBS host Gayle King wrote about her shock on learning of Cheslie Kryst's suicide.
• King and Kryst were friends since the former Miss USA appeared on "CBS This Morning."

Gayle King described her shock and dismay on learning of the death of her friend Cheslie Kryst, in an emotional essay published Monday.

Writing for "Oprah Daily," the CBS host said that she couldn't believe the news when she was first told.

Kryst killed herself on Sunday. On Wednesday her mother April Simpkins released a statement saying that Kryst lived with depression and "hid her pain from everyone."

Medical officials confirmed her death as a suicide on Monday, according to CNN. The 30-year-old was a lawyer and correspondent for Extra TV who won Miss USA in 2019 — a seismic year in which all four major pageant titles went to Black women.

King said she got the news in a text message. "I honestly thought I had read it wrong," she wrote. "I even googled it because I thought there must have been some mistake."

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"I simply refused to believe it," she wrote. But once officials confirmed the cause of death as suicide, she accepted it.

"Cheslie's death is a jarring reminder that you never really know what's going on in people's lives," King wrote.

King said she met Kryst in 2019 when she hosted her on "CBS This Morning," and said she was drawn to her.

"She had that gorgeous head of hair, that megawatt smile, not to mention that she was just a really kind person. She was so much more than a pretty girl with a microphone," she wrote.

The two stayed in touch ever since — meeting over Zoom and for lunch, she wrote.

"We'd talk about her job, dating, and everything else going on in her life," she wrote.

But throughout their friendship, there was nothing in Kryst's behavior to suggest she was struggling, wrote King. That disparity is "part of the reason I'm so gutted by the news," she said.

Kryst also left an impression of an effervescent, happy life on her social media feed. But, as experts told Insider's Kieran Press-Reynolds in the wake of Kryst's death, people living with depression often mask their symptoms to project a "perfect" exterior.

"Everybody who knew or worked with Cheslie is walking around in shock," wrote King. "How do you explain the unexplainable?"

Saying that it was "equally scary" that other people may be masking symptoms of depression, King called on readers to check in on even their "strong" friends.