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The first part of Bobby Brown’s interview with Matt Lauer aired on The Today Show this morning. We had some advance details yesterday, when we heard that Bobby denied being the one who got Whitney hooked on drugs. He told Lauer that Whitney was doing narcotics before he met her, and that he had only done pot and booze before they got together.

Bobby said a lot of really nice things about how much he loved Whitney and cherished their time together. He didn’t seem that emotional about her, though. He was somewhat detached when it came to describing how he learned about her death. Bobby came across as very pragmatic about Whitney, and I guess I expected him to at least get choked up about her. When you lose someone and are describing how you found out they died you usually remember how you felt at the time and start to get teary about it. He did say that he cried at the time. Maybe he’s just very guarded about his feelings. Here’s more:

Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston may no longer have been a couple when she died in February, but as he told TODAY’s Matt Lauer in an interview that aired Wednesday morning — his first interview since her death — he still misses her fiercely.

“Our relationship was great,” he said. “I had 14 beautiful, beautiful years with that woman.” And it’s not just his revisionist history, he insisted: “I can honestly say that — I loved that woman with — with everything that I am. And I believe she loved me the same way.”

Still, Whitney and Bobby’s relationship was, almost from the start, filled with conflict of one kind or the other. Brown says he never used hard drugs before meeting Houston, and said that she had used drugs before they were involved. “I worried about it when … we first got together until I tried it,” he said. “And when I tried it, for some reason, I have an addictive personality.”

He does have some regrets, wondering to Lauer whether “I coulda done something different, you know to — ensure that she had a longer life. But … you have to want it, you know?”

The 2005 single-season reality show “Being Bobby Brown,” which put an uncomfortable spotlight on their relationship and showed Houston’s temper flaring, he says, was a “wake-up, because we were able to see what others were saying about us …. (to) see that our drug use had affected our relationship, had affected the love we felt for each other.”

But Houston declined to appear on a second season of the show, and the pair separated in 2006; they divorced the following year. Still, said Brown — who told Lauer he would be getting remarried “soon” — he still has a lot of room in his heart for his late former wife.

“My fiancee knows how I felt about that woman,” Brown said. “My kids know how I feel … how I felt about Whitney. It’s not a secret, you know? I was in love with her deeply.”

[From The Today Show.MSNBC.com]

Bobby loved Whitney, but he had moved on from her before she died, and it showed. I like what he said about how she was glowing the last time he saw her, a week before her death. We heard rumors of their reconciliation back in 2008, and I tend to think they had an on-off relationship that didn’t end for good until one of them was in another relationship.

Also, I just want to say that I’m glad Matt Lauer did this interview instead of Ann Curry. Ann would have just asked Bobby how he was doing and gone “mmmhmm” and tried to look deep into his eyes, probing for sadness. She wouldn’t have asked any hard questions at all.