"Jon & Kate" star says show didn't cause divorce

Jon and Kate Gosselin are seen with their children in this undated handout photo.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The divorce of U.S. reality television stars Jon and Kate Gosselin was not the result of a TV show filming their daily lives coping with eight children, the wife from the top-rating show said on Monday.

In her first interview since the couple announced on their three-year-old TV show in June that they were separating, Kate Gosselin told the Today show that she has no regrets about doing the series "Jon & Kate Plus 8," which airs on cable channel TLC.

"I feel like it would have happened anyway, cameras on (or) cameras off," said Gosselin, who has twin eight-year-old daughters and five-year-old sextuplets -- three girls and three boys -- with Jon Gosselin.

"I don't live my life in regret," she said. "I typically tend to look forward not backward and I still feel like this is a good thing, it's healthy and the kids would agree."

TLC said the June episode in which the couple announced they were breaking up attracted its biggest prime-time audience ever at 10.6 million total viewers with 6.5 million of those in the key 18-49 year-old demographic sought by advertisers.

The episode aired the same day Kate Gosselin filed legal papers for divorce in the couple's home state of Pennsylvania. The show then went on a six-week hiatus and resumed its fifth season last week with the parents expected to take turns staying in their home with the children.

As the Gosselin's relationship increasingly turned sour the couple became fodder for celebrity press and paparazzi that speculated about extra-marital affairs in the weeks leading up to the announcement of their divorce.

Gosselin said when she is not at home with the children she is "in hiding from the paparazzi" and she spoke of being hurt by allegations her brother and his wife had made in the media about her parenting.

"I feel like in everybody's life you make sacrifices, everybody has to work, everybody has a job, ours is a very unique job," she said. "It's taught us many things, it's given our kids many opportunities they would not have otherwise had. They each have a substantial college fund."

Cable channel TLC is a unit of Maryland-based Discovery Communications.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols)