Manti Te'o hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, 'in love' with footballer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, inset, says he had romantic feelings for Manti Te'o. RONAIAH Tuiasosopo, the man who hoaxed Manti Te'o, has said he had 'romantic' feelings for the footballer. The 22-year-old Californian posed as Lennay Kekua, who he invented by using pictures of Diane O'Meara, a former high school classmate. Kekua's 'death' from leukemia in September, resulted in a national outpouring of grief for Te'o. Asked by Dr Phil McGraw if this was a romantic relationship for him, Tuiasosopo said it was. Dr Phil then asked "are you therefore gay?," to which Tuiasosopo replied, "When you put it that way, yes." He then caught himself and said "I am confused." Dr Phil told the US Today show that in his opinion Tuiasosopo had feelings for Te'o. "Here we have a young man that fell deeply, romantically in love,"" he said. Tuiasosopo says he tried to come clean many times during the two year 'relationship.' "I wanted to end it because after everything I had gone through, I finally realised that I just had to move on with my life," he said. I had to start just living and let this go. There were many times where Manti and Lennay had broken up, but something would bring them back together whether it was something going on in his life or in Lennay's life, or in this case, my life. In an exclusive interview with Katie Couric, Te'o was asked if he was gay to which he replied "No, far from it ... far from it."