In her new movie Then Came You, Kathie Lee Gifford plays a widow who finds romance — and she’s hoping life will imitate art. “A girl can dream,” Kathie Lee exclusively told Closer Weekly in the magazine’s latest issue, on newsstands now, at the Greenwich International Film Festival’s recent Changemaker Gala. “I’ll know it if happens again.”

And if it does, she’ll be ready. Kathie Lee, 65, wears a wedding dress during one scene in Then Came You, and “I’ve saved it because I’m getting married in it again,” she says. “I just felt very beautiful, in love and hopeful in that dress.”

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Still, she’s in no rush. Kathie Lee has been on only one date since husband Frank Gifford died at 84 in August 2015. “God’s going to bring someone into my life, and I’ll be delighted,” she says. “I ain’t looking for it. It’ll find me!”

In the meantime, Kathie Lee is keeping busy. She’s already planning to reunite with her Then Came You costar Craig Ferguson on a series of sequels. “There are 17 million widows in America and 5 million widowers, and they don’t make movies for us,” she says. “I want to write movies for people like me. We want substance, romance, entertainment, laughs — and hope.”

Kathie Lee thinks people who have lost their life partners will identify with her character, who takes a trip to Scotland to spread her late husband’s ashes and strikes sparks with a local innkeeper, played by Craig. “We wanted to leave people thinking, ‘If I’ve got a pulse, I’ve still got a purpose,’” she says. “‘If I feel something in my heart, I still have the capacity for love.’”

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That holds true for Kathie Lee as well. Despite her busy schedule, “If there was somebody in my life, I’d make all the time in the world for him,” she says. After all, “we’ve only got so much time on this planet — I want to maximize every minute I have!”

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