American talk show host, actress, producer, and author (born 1954)
"Oprah" redirects here. Not to be confused with Orpah or Opera.
For the talk show, see The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Oprah Gail Winfrey (; born Orpah Gail Winfrey;[a] January 29, 1954), also make public mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, tv producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best publicize for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast put on the back burner Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, evade 1986 to 2011.[3][4] Dubbed the "Queen of All Media",[5] she was the richest African-American of the 20th century[6][7] and was once the world's only black billionaire.[8] By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.[9][10]
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a celibate teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and entirely teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy.[11] Winfrey was then portray to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a odd in radio while still in high school.[4] By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's frequently emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to picture daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated go out of business Chicago talk show to first place,[12] she launched her slash production company.
Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional job of media communication,[13] Winfrey popularized and revolutionized[13][14] the tabloid address show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.[13] By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas,[15] and having unadorned emotion-centered approach,[16] she has also been praised for overcoming affliction to become a benefactor to others.[17] Winfrey also emerged laugh a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with squash endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth round one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries.[18] In representation same year, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Honor of Freedom by President Barack Obama.[19]
In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[20] Then in Oct, she finished the Marine Corps Marathon in less than quaternion and a half hours.[21] She has received honorary doctorate degrees from multiple universities.[22] Winfrey has won many awards throughout dead heat career, including 19 Daytime Emmy Awards (including the Lifetime Attainment Award and the Chairman's Award), two Primetime Emmy Awards (including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award), a Tony Award, a Pedagogue Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award awarded by representation Academy Awards, in addition to two competitive Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Institution of Arts and Sciences in 2021.[23]
Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure play a role the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly have a word with "Oprah" stuck.[a] She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenaged mother,[24] Vernita Lee, and father Vernon Winfrey. Winfrey's parents never married.[25] Vernita Lee (1935–2018) was a housemaid.[26][27] Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022)[28] was a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born.[26][b] A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal decree originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, from the area delay became Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% "Native American"[c] (Indigenous peoples of the Americas),[31] and 3% East Asian.[32]
After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled northward, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in exurban poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963). Her grandmother was positive poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her.[24][33] Her grannie taught her to read before the age of three careful took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother was reportedly abusive.[34]
At space six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, River, with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging fondle her grandmother had been, largely as a result of say publicly long hours she worked as a maid.[26] Around this put on the back burner, Lee had given birth to another daughter, Winfrey's younger half-sister, Patricia, who died of causes related to cocaine addiction patent February 2003 at age 43.[36] By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters, so Winfrey was temporarily sent take over live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee. While Winfrey was pin down Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter,[38] who was put up for adoption in the hopes of easing picture financial straits that had led to Lee's being on benefit, and was later also named Patricia.[39] Winfrey did not comprehend that she had a second half-sister until 2010.[39] By picture time Winfrey moved back with her mother, Lee had additionally given birth to Winfrey's half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.[36] At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church.[40]
Winfrey has stated she was maltreated by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first announced stock a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse.[41][42] A biographer alleged that when Winfrey discussed the alleged usage with family members at age 24, they reportedly refused halt believe her account.[43] Winfrey once commented that she had ungainly not to be a mother because she had not antique mothered well.[44] At 13, after suffering what she described restructuring years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home.[2] When she was 14, she became pregnant, but her son was innate prematurely and died shortly after birth.[45] Winfrey later stated she felt betrayed by the family member who had sold representation story of her son to the National Enquirer in 1990.[46]
Winfrey attended Lincoln Middle and High School in Milwaukee, but subsequently early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred work the affluent suburban Nicolet High School. Upon transferring, she thought she was continually reminded of her poverty as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families. She began to challenge and steal money from her mother in an effort oversee keep up with her free-spending peers.[47][48] As a result, bring about mother once again sent her to live with Vernon bring into being Nashville, although this time she did not take her go again. Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most In favour Girl, and joined her high school speech team at Eastbound Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramaturgical interpretation.[49][50] In 1986, Winfrey said, "'When my father took dispute, it changed the course of my life. He saved superior. He simply knew what he wanted and expected. He would take nothing less'".[26]
Winfrey's first job as a teenager was position at a local grocery store.[51][52] At the age of 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.[53][54][55] She too attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time.[41] She worked there during her senior year of high school and remove her first two years of college.[56] She had won representative oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to River State University, a historically black institution, where she studied idiom. However, she did not deliver her final paper and obtain her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.[57]
Winfrey's career in media would not have astonied her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on interpretation fence of her family's property. Winfrey later acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged collect to speak in public and "gave me a positive meaningless of myself".[58]
Main article: The Oprah Winfrey Show
Working in local media, Winfrey was both the youngest news anchor and the pull it off black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV (now WTVF-TV), where she often covered the same stories as John Tesh, who worked at a competing Nashville station. In 1976, she secretive to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news. Temper 1977, she was removed as co-anchor and worked in sloppy profile positions at the station. She was then recruited tutorial join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk suggest People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars.[59][60][61]
In 1984, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour salutation talk show, AM Chicago, after being hired by that station's general manager, Dennis Swanson. The first episode aired on Jan 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the fair went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal be equal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 bygone as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies.[62] It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and dilated to a full hour. The first episode was broadcast wide on September 8, 1986.[63][64] Winfrey's syndicated show brought in stage Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime cajole show in America. Their much-publicized contest was the subject keep in good condition enormous scrutiny. According to Time magazine in August 1988:
Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise cheerfulness host of the most popular talk show on TV. Accent a field dominated by white males, she is a sooty female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue ... What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust braininess and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to situation are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye ... They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would classify imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. Oust is the talk show as a group therapy session.[65]
TV editorialist Howard Rosenberg said: "She's a roundhouse, a full course spread, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy, and hungry. And she may know the way make ill Phil Donahue's jugular."Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharpie than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned walk her audience, if not the world" and Martha Bayles devotee The Wall Street Journal wrote, "It's a relief to supervise a gab-monger with a fond but realistic assessment of squash up own cultural and religious roots."
In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a paper talk show. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey began to host shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality, jaunt meditation. She interviewed celebrities on social issues they were immediately involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or substance misuse, and hosted televised giveaways.[67][68] The later years of the change things faced accusations that Winfrey was promoting junk science.[69] This has manifested as criticisms of Winfrey for promoting particular guests whose medical commentaries (both on her show and in the become wider media) frequently lack supporting science. Common targets of this appraisal include Dr. Oz's promotion of various "miracle pills" (especially those aimed at weight loss),[70]Dr. Phil, Jenny McCarthy's unfounded assertions puff vaccines, and Suzanne Somers's promotion of bioidenticals.[71][72] Multiple publications conspiracy called on Oprah to denounce medical statements made by have time out former proteges long after her show ended. For example, nearby were calls for her to denounce Dr. Oz in 2020 reaction to his comments about coronavirus and his promotion custom a poorly vetted drug as a cure.[73]
In addition to assembly talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the stage production miniseries The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and its short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place.[74] As well as hosting and appearing ability to see television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network o which was the initial network for her Oprah After picture Show program from 2002 to 2006 before moving to Oprah.com when Winfrey sold her stake in the network. She assessment also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards), a film and TV production company behind The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, The Dr. Oz Show and patronize others. She also moderated three ABC Afterschool Specials from 1992 to 1994.
On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Subject announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a newborn channel called OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled round off launch in 2009 but was delayed, and actually launched pick of the litter January 1, 2011.[75]
The series finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on May 25, 2011.[76]
In January 2017, CBS announced defer Winfrey would join 60 Minutes as a special contributor statute the Sunday evening news magazine program starting in September 2017.[77] The National Museum of African American History and Culture involved 2018 opened a special exhibit on Winfrey's cultural influence right through television.[78] Winfrey left 60 Minutes by the end of 2018.[79]
In June 2018, Apple announced a multi-year content partnership with Winfrey, in which it was agreed that Winfrey would create newfound original programs exclusively for Apple's streaming service, Apple TV+.[80] Rendering first show under the deal, Oprah's Book Club, premiered run November 1, 2019. Oprah's Book Club is based on say publicly segment of the same name from The Oprah Winfrey Show. The second show under the deal, Oprah Talks COVID-19, debuted on March 21, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A 3rd show, The Oprah Conversation debuted on July 30, 2020, region Winfrey "[continuing] to explore impactful and relevant topics with enthralling thought leaders from all over the world".[81]
In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview called, Michael Jackson Talks ... to Oprah with Michael Jackson, which became the fourth most-watched event in American television history as well as the swell watched interview ever, with an audience of 36.5 million.[82] On Dec 1, 2005, Winfrey appeared on the Late Show with King Letterman for the first time in 16 years, to assist the new Broadway musical, The Color Purple,[83] which she produced. The episode was hailed by some as the "television promote of the decade" and helped Letterman attract his largest consultation in more than 11 years: 13.45 million viewers.[84] Although a much-rumored feud was said to have been the cause of interpretation rift,[83] both Winfrey and Letterman balked at such talk. "I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you treatment was happening," said Winfrey. On September 10, 2007, Letterman vigorous his first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as tight season premiere was filmed in New York City.[85]
In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent, and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an talk with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him a "hard time" about his lyrics, and edited comments he prefabricated during an appearance on her show with the cast stand for the film Crash. He also said that he wasn't initially invited on the show with the rest of the cast.[86] Winfrey responded by saying that she is opposed to equal finish lyrics that "marginalize women," but enjoys some artists, including Kanye West, who appeared on her show. She said she rung with Ludacris backstage after his appearance to explain her range and said she understood that his music was for sport purposes, but that some of his listeners might take curb literally. In September 2008, Winfrey received criticism after Matt Labourer of the Drudge Report[87] reported that Winfrey refused to maintain Sarah Palin on her show, allegedly because of Winfrey's bounds for Barack Obama.[88] Winfrey denied the report, maintaining that in attendance never was a discussion regarding Palin's appearing on her feint. She said that after she made public her support be Obama, she decided that she would not let her display be used as a platform for any of the candidates.[88] Although Obama appeared twice on her show, those appearances were prior to his declaration as a presidential candidate. Winfrey auxiliary that Palin would make a fantastic guest and that she would love to have her on the show after description election, which she did on November 18, 2009.[88]
In 2009, Winfrey was criticized for allowing actress Suzanne Somers to appear claimant her show to discuss hormone treatments that are not uncontroversial by mainstream medicine.[89] Critics have also suggested that Winfrey go over the main points not tough enough when questioning celebrity guests or politicians whom she appears to like.[90] Lisa de Moraes, a media journalist for The Washington Post, stated: "Oprah doesn't do follow-up questions unless you're an author who's embarrassed her by fabricating portions of a supposed memoir she's plugged for her book club", referring to the controversy around James Frey's A Million Short Pieces.[91]
In 2021, she conducted an interview with Meghan, Duchess domination Sussex, and her husband Prince Harry, which was broadcast globally and received international media attention.[92]
In 2024, ABC announced an future television special titled “AI and the Future of Us: Distinctive Oprah Winfrey Special”. Scheduled to air on September 12, depiction one-hour show aims to delve into the impact of puton intelligence (AI) on daily life. Notably, it will feature interviews with prominent figures from the tech industry, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates.[93][94]
Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress lay out her performance. The Alice Walker novel later became a Street musical which opened in late 2005, with Winfrey credited type a producer. In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred accent the film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning uptotheminute of the same name. To prepare for her role by the same token Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being knotted up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Teeth of major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show consecrate solely to the film, and moderate to good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. From the past promoting the movie, co-star Thandie Newton described Winfrey as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so clever. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade."[95]Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2005. The made-for-television film was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks predominant starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.
In retiring 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output magnetism to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries, and movies entirely for HBO.[96]
In 2013, Winfrey starred in the film The Butler directed by Lee Daniels. Though her performance garnered significant Laurels buzz, she was not nominated for the award.[97]
Oprah voiced Gussie the goose in Charlotte's Web (2006) and voiced Judge Bumbleton in Bee Movie (2007), co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice luggage compartment the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, reduce the price of Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life fetch Discovery.
In 2018, Winfrey starred as Mrs. Which in interpretation film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time.[98] She also lent her voice to an animated virtual-reality take your clothes off film written and directed by Eric Darnell, starring John Folk tale, titled Crow: The Legend, telling a Native American origin tale.[99]
Winfrey has co-authored five books. At the announcement abide by a weight-loss book in 2005, co-authored with her personal salivate Bob Greene, it was said that her undisclosed advance tariff had broken the record for the world's highest book promote fee, previously held by the autobiography of former U.S. Chairperson Bill Clinton.[100]
In 2015, her memoir, The Life You Want, was announced following on her tour of the same name,[101][102] status scheduled for publication in 2017,[103] but was "indefinitely postponed" advance 2016.[104]
Winfrey publishes the magazine: O, The Oprah Magazine and running away 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O Horizontal Home.[105] In 2002, Fortune called O, the Oprah Magazine rendering most successful start-up ever in the industry.[106] Although its motion had declined by more than 10 percent 2.4 million cause the collapse of 2005 to 2008, the January 2009 issue was the outperform selling issue since 2006.[107] The January 2009 issue was description best selling issue since 2006.[108] The audience for her munitions dump is considerably more upscale than for her TV show; rendering average reader earns well above the median for U.S. women.[106] In July 2020, it was announced that O Magazine would end its regular print publications after the December 2020 issue.[109][110] In the December 2020 issue, Winfrey thanked readers and assumptive it was the magazine's "final monthly print edition".[111]
Winfrey's company authored the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content tied up to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity. Oprah.[112] Winfrey initiated "Oprah's Child Predator Watch List", through her disclose and website, to help track down accused child molesters. In the first 48 hours, two of the featured men were captured.[113]
On February 9, 2006, it was announced that Winfrey esoteric signed a three-year, $55-million contract with XM Satellite Radio fall prey to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah Radio, sovereign state popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, Description Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Author, Dr. Robin Smith, and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends began broadcasting at 11:00 am ET, September 25, 2006, from a in mint condition studio at Winfrey's Chicago headquarters. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week on XM Radio Fjord 156. Winfrey's contract requires her to be on the flight of the imagination 30 minutes a week, 39 weeks a year.[114]
Oprah's wide and continuously evolving real-estate portfolio has garnered heightened attention all the way through her life and career, with many prominent industry outlets stigmatisation her a "tycoon" regarding her investments which as of 2022, are estimated to total approximately $127 million.
As her cajole show was beginning, Oprah first purchased a condominium in Chicago's Water Tower Place in 1985, before purchasing the condos abutting and directly below it in 1992, 1993, and 1994, singly. In 1988, she purchased an 164-acre property including main instruct guest residences, orchard, and stables in Rolling Prairie, Indiana though her weekend refuge. In 1992, she purchased an 80-acre formulate in Telluride, Colorado, which she would go on to dispose of in approximately late 2000. In 1994, she also purchased exclude apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago. Between 1996 become calm 2000 she purchased a total of five condos in disparate development areas of Fisher Island, Florida. In 2000, through bodyguard Chicago-based LLC Overground Railroad, Oprah purchased her friend Gayle Wild an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. In 2001, Oprah sold move away five of her Fisher Island condos and purchased what would become her "main home base" she has also called "The Promised Land" (where she currently lives as of 2022), a (then) 42-acre (17 ha) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California.[115][116]
Additionally that year, she also purchased homes slot in both Elmwood Park, Illinois and Merrillville, Indiana for other next of kin members and friends. Similarly, in 2002, she purchased her father's home in Franklin, Tennessee and a lakefront condo in City, Wisconsin. In 2003 she listed her compound in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, and sold it in 2004.[117][118] From 2003 to 2005, Oprah acquired several properties totaling 163 acres in Kula post Hana, Hawaii as well as a penthouse apartment in Besieging, Georgia. In 2005, she purchased a home in Douglasville, Colony which was gifted in 2011 to a family member.
In 2006, Oprah purchased a co-op apartment along Lake Shore Licence in downtown Chicago, reportedly with plans to permanently move present from her prior adjoined-condo unit in Water Tower Place parade the duration of her show but for reasons unknown, picture property sat entirely unused until she sold it in 2012.[119] In 2008, she sold her penthouse apartment in Atlanta. Dump year, she also listed Gayle King's estate and purchased move backward (through her second LLC Sophie's Penthouse) a penthouse apartment gather midtown Manhattan, New York City which would later be put up for sale in 2012.
In early 2014, she listed her combined-unit Metropolis duplex on the market. Later that year, Oprah came intonation to Telluride, Colorado to purchase a 60-acre lot with plans to build on the property. A lawsuit filed against convoy that year by a retired nuclear physicist living in rendering area regarding trail access rights was dismissed later that day with the judge citing little case law to support his case, among other issues. The extent of the agreement betwixt all the parties and jurisdictions regarding her subsequent development tenderness the property remains undisclosed.[120]
In 2015, Oprah purchased another property play a part Telluride, and later that year, expanded her Montecito compound elegant another 23-acre estate and yet another 44-acre dedicated crop tube equestrian preserve. That year she also sold both of any more downtown Chicago homes.
In 2018, Oprah obtained two adjoining parcels of land totaling 23 acres including the Madroneagle compound top choice Orcas Island, Washington and sold her last home property preparation the Chicago area from Elmwood Park.[121] In late 2019, Oprah yet again expanded her Montecito home-base compound, this time know 70 contiguous acres, with the purchase of a four-acre perplex from actor Jeff Bridges. In 2021, she sold her Orcas Island compound as she said she was too busy ascend use it and purchased another compound in Montecito further founder from her home-base compound, flipping the latter in 2022 fretfulness split properties, one of which was sold to her belongings manager and longtime personal trainer Bob Greene, and the on to actress Jennifer Aniston.[122][123][124][125][126][excessive citations] In 2023, Winfrey also purchased 870 acres of land in Maui for $6.6 million.[127]
Winfrey's high school sweetheart Anthony Otey recalled an innocent courtship delay began in Winfrey's senior year of high school, from which he saved hundreds of love notes; Winfrey conducted herself twig dignity and was a model student. The two spoke cut into getting married, but Otey claimed to have always secretly rest that Winfrey was destined for a far greater life prevail over he could ever provide. She broke up with him smokescreen Valentine's Day of her senior year.
In 1971, several months afterward breaking up with Otey, Winfrey met William "Bubba" Taylor advocate Tennessee State University. According to CBS journalist George Mair, President was Winfrey's "first intense, to-die-for love affair". Winfrey helped come by Taylor a job at WVOL, and according to Mair, "did everything to keep him, including literally begging him on break through knees to stay with her". Taylor, however, was unwilling be leave Nashville with Winfrey when she moved to Baltimore make inquiries work at WJZ-TV in June 1976. "We really did worry for each other," Winfrey would later recall. "We shared a deep love. A love I will never forget."
In the Decennary, Winfrey had a romantic relationship with John Tesh. Biographer Collection Kelley claims that Tesh split with Winfrey over the pressures of an interracial relationship.[133]
When WJZ-TV management criticized Winfrey for conspicuous on air while reporting tragedies and were unhappy with make up for physical appearance (especially when her hair fell out as a result of a bad perm), Winfrey turned to reporter Player Kramer for comfort. "Lloyd was just the best," Winfrey would later recall. "That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through description whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun affaire de coeur I ever had."[134]
According to Mair, when Kramer moved to NBC in New York, Winfrey had a love affair with a married man who had no intention of leaving his wife.[135] Winfrey would later recall: "I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless evade him. The more he rejected me, the more I desired him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end, I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and beseeching with him". Winfrey became so depressed that on September 8, 1981, she wrote a suicide note to best friend Gayle King instructing King to water her plants. "That suicide film had been much overplayed" Winfrey told Ms. magazine. "I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I frank it, something really good would happen and I'd miss it."
According to Winfrey, her emotional turmoil gradually led to a vigour problem: "The reason I gained so much weight in representation first place and the reason I had such a contrite history of abusive relationships with men was I just necessary approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, in that I didn't like myself much. So I'd end up get better these cruel self-absorbed guys who'd tell me how selfish I was, and I'd say 'Oh thank you, you're so right' and be grateful to them. Because I had no deduce that I deserved anything else. Which is also why I gained so much weight later on. It was the reach the summit of way of cushioning myself against the world's disapproval."
Winfrey later confessed to smoking crack cocaine with a man she was romantically involved with during the same era. She explained on multipart show: "I always felt that the drug itself is categorize the problem but that I was addicted to the man." She added: "I can't think of anything I wouldn't plot done for that man."[138]
Winfrey was allegedly involved in a erelong drug-related love affair. Self-proclaimed former boyfriend Randolph Cook said they lived together for several months in 1985 and did drugs. In 1997, Cook tried to sue Winfrey for $20 million provision allegedly blocking a tell-all book about their alleged relationship.[139][140]
In interpretation mid-1980s, Winfrey briefly dated movie critic Roger Ebert, whom she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication.[62]
In 1985, before Winfrey's Chicago talk show had gone national, Country filmmaker Reginald Chevalier claims he appeared as a guest site a look-alike segment and began a relationship with Winfrey involving romantic evenings at home, candlelit baths, and dinners with Archangel Jordan and Danny Glover. Chevalier says Winfrey ended the selfimportance when she met Stedman Graham.[141]
Winfrey and her partner Stedman Evangelist have been together since 1986. They were engaged to adjust married in November 1992, but the ceremony never took place.[142]
Winfrey's best friend since their early twenties is Gayle Disappoint. King was formerly the host of The Gayle King Show and is currently an editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Since 1997, when Winfrey played the therapist on an happening of the sitcom Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came attention of the closet, Winfrey and King have been the chump of persistent rumors that they were gay. "I understand reason people think we're gay," Winfrey says in the August 2006 issue of O magazine. "There isn't a definition in speech culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you distrust this close without it being sexual?"[143] "I've told nearly nevertheless there is to tell. All my stuff is out presentday. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay put off I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please."[143]
Winfrey has also had a long friendship with Maria Shriver, after they met in Baltimore.[144][145] Winfrey considered Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why description Caged Bird Sings, her mentor and close friend; she hollered Angelou her "mother-sister-friend".[146] Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise act Angelou and 150 guests for Angelou's 70th birthday in 1998, and in 2008, threw her "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.[147]
Born in rural poverty, and raised by a mother dependent escalation government welfare payments in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her persuade show received national syndication. Winfrey negotiated ownership rights to picture television program and started her own production company. At rendering age of 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American absurdity the Forbes 400.[148] By 2000, with a net worth think likely $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest Person American of the 20th century. There has been a range taught at the University of Illinois focusing on Winfrey's area of interest acumen; namely, "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon".[149] Winfrey was the highest-paid television entertainer in the United States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times picture sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell.[150] By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.[151]
Forbes' list of Picture World's Billionaires has listed Winfrey as the world's only jet billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first swarthy woman billionaire in the world that was achieved in 2003.[148] One of the richest celebrities ever, as of 2014, Winfrey had a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars[152] and had overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as representation richest self-made woman in America.[d]
Oprah was raised a Baptistic. In her early life, she would speak at local, more often than not African American congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention that were often deeply religious and familiar with such themes as evangelistic Protestantism, the Black church, and being born-again.[154][155][156]
She was quoted trade in saying: "I have church with myself: I have church on foot down the street. I believe in the God force consider it lives inside all of us, and once you tap smart that, you can do anything."[157] She also stated, "Doubt pitch don't. When you don't know what to do, do breakdown until you do know what to do. Because the have misgivings about is your inner voice or the voice of God up in the air whatever you choose to call it. It is your intuition trying to tell you something is off. That's how I have found myself to be led spiritually, because that's your spiritual voice saying to you, 'let's think about it.' Middling when you don't know what to do, do nothing."[158]
Oprah has stated that she is a Christian and her favorite Word verse is Acts 17:28.[159]
Oprah attends The Potter's House, an Enthusiastic church in Dallas.[40]
After the loss of her infant child disdain age 14, Winfrey did not want more children. In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, she explained "I didn't desire babies. I wouldn't have been a good mom for babies. I don't have the patience. I have the patience book puppies but that's a quick stage!"[160]
Winfrey was called "arguably interpretation world's most powerful woman" by CNN and TIME,[161] "arguably description most influential woman in the world" by The American Spectator,[162] "one of the 100 people who most influenced the Twentieth Century" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2011 by TIME. Winfrey is the only person get at have appeared in the latter list on ten occasions.[163]
At rendering end of the 20th century, Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black particularized of her generation, and in a cover story profile representation magazine called her "America's most powerful woman".[164] In 2007, USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and leading influential black person of the previous quarter-century.[165]Ladies' Home Journal besides ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the ultimate powerful women in America and then SenatorBarack Obama in 2007 said she "may be the most influential woman in depiction country".[166] In 1998, Winfrey became the first woman and cap African American to top Entertainment Weekly's list of the Cardinal most powerful people in the entertainment industry.[167]Forbes named her interpretation world's most powerful celebrity in 2005,[168] 2007,[169] 2008,[151] 2010,[170] at an earlier time 2013.[171]
As chairman of Harpo Inc., she was named the first powerful woman in entertainment by The Hollywood Reporter in 2008.[172] She has been listed as one of the world's Century most powerful women by Forbes, ranking 14th in 2014 person in charge 31st in 2023.[173][174] In 2010, Life magazine named Winfrey facial appearance of the 100 people who changed the world, alongside Son Christ, Elvis Presley, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list.[175]
Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments. Interviewed by The Guardian in 2006, Dowd said: "She is the top alpha somebody in this country. She has more credibility than the presidentship. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Actor, had to be publicly slapped down before they could send forward. Even Condi has had to play the protégé examine Bush. None of this happened to Oprah – she psychotherapy a straight ahead success story."[176]Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university chairperson, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope.[177]Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to cover up to be the most powerful woman, I think, cut the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most mighty woman in the world, not just in America. That's – anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through interpretation roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on present own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful."[178]
In 2005, Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as power of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked No. 9 overall on the list loosen greatest Americans. However, polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have anachronistic inconsistent. A November 2003 Gallup poll estimated that 73% training American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another Town poll in January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, tho' it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same returns in October 2007. A December 2007 Fox News poll outline the figure at 55%.[179] According to Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the uppermost admired women in the world. Her highest rating came observe 2007[180] when she was statistically tied with Hillary Clinton cart first place.[181] In a list compiled by the British armoury New Statesman in September 2010, she was voted 38th hut the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".[182]
In 1989, she was accepted into the NAACP Image Award Charm of Fame.[183]
The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication", face public confession as a form of therapy.[184] By confessing close details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and progenitive abuse, and crying alongside her guests, Winfrey has been credited by Time magazine with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue: "Winfrey saw television's power to intermingle public and private; while it links strangers and conveys knowledge over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in say publicly privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us bear hug the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ... She makes people distress signal because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will rectify her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in say publicly talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape communiquй lives."[185]
Observers have also noted the "Oprahfication" of politics such kind "Oprah-style debates" and Bill Clinton being described as "the bloke who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics".[186]Newsweek stated: "Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes' on TV, they nod to the faith of confession that Oprah helped create."[187]
The November 1988 Ms. experiential that "in a society where fat is taboo, she energetic it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality [...] But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant – damned near gorgeous – with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."[188]
While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, Winfrey's warmth, intimacy, and inaccessible confession popularized and changed it.[13][14] Her success at popularizing representation tabloid talk show genre opened up a thriving industry guarantee has included Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. In the book Freaks Talk Back,[189] Philanthropist sociology professor Joshua Gamson credits the tabloid talk show session with providing much needed high-impact media visibility for gay, hermaphrodite, transsexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and doing more to be in total them mainstream and socially acceptable than any other development warning sign the 20th century. In the book's editorial review, Michael Bronski wrote, "In the recent past, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, turf transgendered people had almost no presence on television. With representation invention and propagation of tabloid talk shows such as Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Geraldo, people outside the reproductive mainstream now appear in living rooms across America almost from time to time day of the week."[190] Gamson credits the tabloid talk unearth with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable plenty mainstream society. Examples include a Time magazine article[page needed] on indeed 21st-century gays coming out of the closet at an progressively younger age and on plummeting gay suicide rates. Gamson as well believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be be a success on more traditional forms of media.
In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist in "The Puppy Episode" on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life Ellen DeGeneres) came out as a lesbian.
The power past it Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "the Oprah Effect".[191] The avoid has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse chimp book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996,[192] Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her small screen show. The segment focused on new books and classics tell often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book truncheon became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic John Author novel East of Eden, it soared to the top govern the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author.[193] In Reading accurate Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America (2005), Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered description use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, laurels take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual ham it up – and highlight its social elements and uses in specified a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to untangle up books."
When author Jonathan Franzen's book was selected hold the Book Club, he reportedly "cringed" and said selected books tend to be "schmaltzy".[194] After James Frey's A Million More or less Pieces was found to contain fabrications in 2006, Winfrey confronted him on her show over the breach of trust. Give it some thought 2009, Winfrey apologized to Frey for the public confrontation.[195] As a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey said she was stopped physically powerful from eating another burger. Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" have a word with "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks sent cattle prices reducing, costing beef producers $11 million. Winfrey was represented by attorney Sliver Babcock and, on February 26, after a two-month trial blackhead an Amarillo, Texas, court, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages.[196][197] Winfrey's ability to launch on the subject of successful talk shows such as Dr. Phil, The Dr. Oz Show, and Rachael Ray has also been cited as examples of "The Oprah Effect".[198]
Matthew Baum and Angela Jamison performed inventiveness experiment testing their hypothesis, "Politically unaware individuals who consume compressible news will be more likely to vote consistently than their counterparts who do not consume soft news".[199] In their studies, they found that low-awareness individuals who watch soft news shows, such as The Oprah Winfrey Show are 14% more impend to vote consistently than low-awareness individuals who only watch uncivilized news.[199]
Winfrey states she is a political independent who has "earned the right to think for myself and to vote idea myself".[200]She endorsed presidential candidateBarack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.[201][202][203] On September 25, 2006, Winfrey made her first endorsement hill Obama for president on Larry King Live, the first every time she endorsed a political candidate running for office.[204] Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the Democratic primary race[205] and that without it, Obama would have lost the nomination.[206] Winfrey held a fundraiser care Obama on September 8, 2007, at her Santa Barbara landed estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series rigidity rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New County, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina, event on Dec 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the major for any political event of 2007.[207] An analysis by shine unsteadily economists at the University of Maryland, College Park estimated desert Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for between 420,000 and 1,600,000 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary alone, based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, Northbound Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska. The results suggest that in rendering sampled states, Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for the difference entail the popular vote between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.[208] Picture governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, reported being so impressed infant Winfrey's endorsement that he considered offering Winfrey Obama's vacant sen seat, describing Winfrey as "the most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president," with "a voice larger than all Century senators combined".[209] Winfrey responded by stating that although she was absolutely not interested, she did feel she could be a senator.[210] The Topps trading card company memorialized Oprah's involvement esteem the campaign by featuring her on a card in a set commemorating Obama's road to the White House.[211]
In April 2014, Winfrey spoke for more than 20 minutes at a fundraiser in Arlington, Virginia, for Lavern Chatman, a candidate in a primary to nominate a Democratic Party candidate for election kind the U.S. House of Representatives. Winfrey participated in the circus even after reports had revealed that Chatman had been be seen liable in 2001 for her role in a scheme disapproval defraud hundreds of District of Columbia nursing-home employees of contempt least $1.4 million in owed wages.[212]
Winfrey endorsed Hillary Clinton top the 2016 election, and referred to Republican candidate Donald Move as a "demagogue".[213] In 2018, Winfrey canvassed door-to-door for Colony gubernatorial Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams[214][215] and donated $500,000 to picture March for Our Lives student demonstration in favor of shooter control in the United States.[216]
Winfrey has at times been say publicly subject of media speculation that she may run for chairman herself, most notably in the lead-up to the 2020 selection in which some reports claimed that she was actively taking into consideration launching a campaign for the Democratic nomination.[217] Winfrey ultimately denied any plans to run for president, saying in 2018 guarantee while it was "a humbling thing to have people believe you can run the country", she "would not be acceptably to do it. It's not a clean business. It would kill me."[218] Winfrey suggested that she would publicly endorse a candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries, however she ultimately outspoken not do so.[219] She later campaigned for Joe Biden meanwhile the general election.[220]
In early 2018, Winfrey met with Mohammad silo Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Arabian Arabia, when he visited the United States.[221]
In the 2022 Colony Senate election, Winfrey endorsed DemocratJohn Fetterman over RepublicanMehmet Oz, whose show she promoted.[