Rielle Hunter: I'm Not a Home Wrecker

April 29, 2010— -- Rielle Hunter denied today she is a "home wrecker" whose illicit affair and illegitimate child with John Edwards played a pivotal role in the breakdown of the former presidential candidate's marriage to his cancer stricken wife.

"Absolutely not," Hunter told Oprah Winfrey when asked if she was a home wrecker. "It's not my experience that a third party wrecks a home."

"You can't steal someone else's husband," she said. "[People are] not property."

Hunter said she still loves Edwards, who she repeatedly referred to as Johnny. When asked if Edwards loves her, she said, "It's my experience that he loves me."

But she rebuffed Winfrey's questions about the status of their relationship. "That's private," she said with a slight laugh.

Hunter added, "I'm not sure I want to get married ever. I don't need marriage to define who I am."

After the affair became public, Edwards' presidential ambitions were destroyed, his cancer stricken wife Elizabeth had publicly castigated Hunter, and a former Edwards aide told the world about a sex tape Hunter and Edwards made together.

Nevertheless, Hunter said she has no regrets.

"I don't regret it. I wouldn't repeat it, but I learned a lot," she said.

But if she has no regrets, she said allowing Edwards' aide Andrew Young to claim paternity of the daughter she had with Edwards, failing to destroy the sex tape, and posing pantsless in GQ last month were "mistakes."

One thing Hunter claims she doesn't know is whether she hurt Elizabeth Edwards, telling Winfrey, "I don't know."

Hunter said she knew Edwards was married when she told the Democratic contender that he was "hot," and went to his New York City hotel room later that same night.

"I did know that he was married, but I didn't know what their marriage was like," she said.

Hunter suggested that the state of Edwards' marriage to his wife Elizabeth shares much of the blame for her affair and the breakdown of the Edwards marriage.

"People bought into the myth of the marriage," Hunter said. "[There is an idea that their marriage] was a storybook and is so perfect and so wonderful and I destroyed it."