In a video posted on Instagram Thursday, National Coming Out Day, Thomas Roberts said that his mother was the first person he came out to.

Roberts, the evening anchor on WGCL-46, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, said that he came out to his mother at 27. He said that he was sobbing and that his mother offered to guess and that she guessed right.

“I couldn't get through it,” Roberts, 46, said. “I was crying. I was sobbing. It was really bad. We were at the kitchen table and she said, honey, don't worry, I'll guess. I'm like okay. She said, you're gay. I said, yes. She said, oh, honey, that's okay. I'm sorry you had to carry this burden alone for so long. It was the greatest reaction I could have ever hoped for, because I was so afraid of having this conversation.”

Roberts advised anyone struggling with coming out to take their time.

Roberts, who in 2015 became the first openly gay anchor of a prime-time newscast when he anchored NBC's Nightly News, married his husband Patrick Abner, a Merck executive, in 2012.