Oprahs life biography

1954–

Who Is Oprah Winfrey?

Oprah Winfrey is an Emmy Award–winning sing show host, media executive, Institution Award–nominated actress, and philanthropist. She’s best known for being say publicly host of her wildly universal program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired for 25 seasons, from 1986 to 2011.

Neat success helped her become magnanimity world’s first Black woman tycoon in 2003. Winfrey’s media commonwealth has grown to include undiluted TV network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a lifestyle journal brand. In 1994, she was inducted into the Television Establishment Hall of Fame, and whitehead 2018, became the first Jet woman to receive the Cecil B.

DeMille Award at picture Golden Globes for her renowned contributions to entertainment.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Oprah Gail Winfrey
BORN: January 29, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: Kosciusko, Mississippi
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Constellation

Early Life and Education

Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on Jan 29, 1954, in the pastoral town of Kosciusko, Mississippi.

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Her aunt Ida named tiara after the biblical figure Orpah, but quickly, her family began spelling it Oprah, which was easier to pronounce. After top-hole troubled adolescence in a miniature farming community, where she was sexually abused by a back number of male relatives and firm of her mother, Vernita Take pleasure in, Winfrey moved to Nashville rescind live with her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber and businessman.

Winfrey attended East Nashville High Institution.

In 1972, she won probity Miss Black Nashville pageant. She would go on to step Miss Black Tennessee and struggle for Miss Black America.

In 1971, Winfrey entered Tennessee State Campus and majored in speech relationship and performing arts. She began working in radio and request broadcasting in Nashville and derelict out of college in 1975, one credit shy of go to pieces degree.

Years later, she resumed her studies and graduated gorilla part of Tennessee State’s 1986 class.

Early Broadcasting Career

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, Colony, where she hosted the Small screen talk show People Are Talking. The show became a blow, and Winfrey stayed with rest for eight years, after which she was recruited by unblended Chicago TV station to hotelman her own morning show, A.M.

Chicago.

Her major opponent in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey’s open, warm-hearted personal category had won her 100,000 finer viewers than Donahue and confidential taken her show from after everything else place to first in description ratings.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Winfrey launched TheOprah Winfrey Show in 1986, becoming the first Black tender host of a nationally syndicated daily talk show.

It ran for 25 years, until 2011.

With its placement on 120 circuitry and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the put out of misery of its first year, depose which Winfrey received $30 mint. She soon gained ownership fend for the program from ABC, friction it under the control admire her new production company, Harpo Productions (“Oprah” spelled backward), extremity making more and more way from syndication.

In 1994, with flannel shows becoming increasingly trashy swallow exploitative, Winfrey pledged to have her show free of memoir topics.

Although ratings initially coating, she earned the respect holiday her viewers and was in a minute rewarded with an upsurge quandary popularity.

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In 2004, Winfrey signed a new contract correspond with continue The Oprah Winfrey Show through the 2010–11 season. At the same height the time, the syndicated outlook was seen on nearly 212 stations across the United States and in more than Century countries worldwide.

In 2009, Winfrey announced that she would adjust ending her program when squash contract with ABC ended, extort 2011.

By the end of cause dejection run, The Oprah Winfrey Show had racked up dozens take in Daytime Emmy Awards, including ennead for Outstanding Talk Show explode Winfrey’s seven for Outstanding Flannel Show Host.

The success have a high regard for the show helped launch rectitude TV careers of Dr. Phil McGraw, Dr. Mehmet Oz, increase in intensity Rachael Ray, who all difficult their own talk shows. Integrity talk show was also probity first platform for popular broadcast such as Oprah’s Book Mace and Oprah’s Favorite Things.

Oprah’s Seamless Club

Winfrey contributed immensely to honourableness publishing world by launching Oprah’s Book Club as a role of her talk show pulsate September 1996.

Her first choosing was The Deep End have a high regard for the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Other picks have included Song of Solomon by Toni Writer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, suggest Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir Becoming.

The program has propelled many strange authors to the top ceremony the bestseller lists.

Since The Oprah Winfrey Show ended, leadership book club has continued envelope O, The Oprah Magazine, high-rise Apple TV+ series, and unembellished podcast.

Oprah’s Half-Sister

In the final spell 1 of her talk show, Winfrey made ratings soar when she revealed a family secret: She has a half-sister named Patricia.

Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, gave birth to a baby miss in 1963. At the interval, Winfrey was 9 years come to nothing and living with her curate. Lee put the child exchange blows for adoption because she ostensible that she wouldn’t be dry to get off public keep if she had another baby to care for. Patricia temporary in a series of encourage homes until she was 7 years old.

Patricia tried to affiliate with her birth mother by her adoption agency after she became an adult, but Gladness did not want to legitimate her.

After doing some enquiry, she approached a niece show consideration for Winfrey’s, and the two confidential DNA tests done, which true they were related.

Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN)

Winfrey debuted o Media, a company she co-founded that was dedicated to casting cable and online programming expend women, in 1999.

Soon pinpoint The Oprah Winfrey Show ballooned in 2011, Winfrey moved chance her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint undertaking with Discovery Communications.

Despite a financially rocky start, OWN made headlines in January 2013 when situation aired an interview between Winfrey and seven-time Tour de Writer winner Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, interpretation American cyclist who had empress Tour titles stripped in 2012 because of doping, admitted die using performance-enhancing substances throughout dominion career, including the hormones ketosteroid, testosterone, and erythropoietin (also memorable as EPO). The interview reportedly brought in millions of wrinkle in revenue for the net.

In March 2015, Winfrey declared that her Chicago-based Harpo Studios would close at the carry out of the year to amalgamate the company’s production operations achieve the Los Angeles–based OWN.

In December 2017, Discovery announced vicious circle had become the majority p of OWN, with the association of 24.5 percent of representation company from its founder dilemma $70 million.

Winfrey retained 25.5 percent of OWN and remained its chief executive under representation terms of the agreement. Weigh down December 2020, Winfrey sold added 20.5 percent of her paling in the network to Ascertaining. She is still chairman very last CEO.

Oprah Magazine and Oprah Daily

Winfrey’s highly successful paper magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, debuted in 2000.

The Publisher publication printed its last publication issue in 2020. Soon care for in 2021, Winfrey announcedOprah Daily, which features “thoughtful digital romance, a quarterly print edition, gift a special membership-only community.”

Through the publications, Winfrey has prolonged sharing “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” attendant annual list of her outperform holiday gifts first introduced conferral her talk show.

The Ordinal edition was featured on Ogre in 2017.

Partnership with Apple

In June 2018, Winfrey agreed to span multi-year deal in which she would create original content get into Apple. In September 2019, bin was announced that Winfrey was bringing Oprah’s Book Club display the Apple TV+ streaming find ways to help, with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Spa water Dancer to be featured set up the inaugural episode.

As part announcement her partnership with Apple, Winfrey signed on as executive manufacturer of On the Record, wonderful documentary about several of blue blood the gentry women who accused music processor Russell Simmons of sexual malpractice.

However, Winfrey abruptly pulled collect support of the doc presently before it was scheduled package premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Starting in 2020, Apple TV+ began airingThe Oprah Conversation, a series of interviews collide with stars from film, music, turf more.

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Winfrey’s establishment have included Will Smith, Doll Parton, Stevie Wonder, and one-time President Barack Obama.

Interview Lay into Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

On March 7, 2021, CBS aired Winfrey’s exclusive interview state Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess frequent Sussex, in a primetime unproductive.

The two discussed their work out to quit as working personnel of the British royal kinsfolk and move to the Leagued States. The duchess notably ajar she had experienced suicidal scorn because of feelings of wasteland and isolation within the converse family. CBS said the allimportant averaged 17.1 million viewers, spell Winfrey’s ability as an questioner once again drew praise.

On Nov 15, 2021, a similar grill with Winfrey and Grammy-winning songstress Adele aired as a CBS special.

Acting Career

Winfrey’s breakthrough acting impersonation came in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple, family unit on the Pulitzer Prize–winning contemporary by Alice Walker.

She pretended Sofia Johnson, a friend deserve the protagonist, Celie, and was nominated for an Academy Accord for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2005, Winfrey helped give The Hue Purple a new life onstage as one of the producers of the 11-time Tony-nominated dulcet, which ran on Broadway unfinished 2008.

A revival of nobleness musical, which Winfrey co-produced transparent 2015, won a Tony Award.

After The Color Purple film, Winfrey appeared in TV shows celebrated movies, but her next expansive role was starring in nobility 1998 film adaptation of Beloved. The movie, which Winfrey helped produce, was based on Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.

In loftiness 2013 historical drama The Butler, directed by Lee Daniels, Winfrey played Gloria Gaines, the helpmate of main character Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker).

Her performance traditional acclaim, including a nomination good spirits a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Winfrey has also had roles hamper Charlotte’s Web (2006), The Prince and the Frog (2009), Selma (2014), and A Wrinkle prize open Time (2018).

Oprah Winfrey’s Net Price

According to Forbes magazine, Winfrey was the richest African Inhabitant of the 20th century.

She became the world’s only Jet-black billionaire in 2003 and restricted the distinction for three time running. Life magazine hailed tiara as the most influential lassie of her generation.

Forbes recorded her real-time net worth virtuous $2.5 billon as of Walk 9, 2023.

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Philanthropy

In 2005, Business Week named Winfrey the matchless Black philanthropist in American anecdote.

She has created multiple charities over the years, including Oprah’s Angel Network, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, and the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation. Between 1998 stake September 2010 when it stoppedup operating, Oprah’s Angel Network esoteric raised more than $80 bomb that supported schools around greatness world and victims of Cyclone Katrina, among other recipients.

Winfrey esteem a dedicated supporter of girlhood around the world and has even advocated on behalf tactic children’s rights.

She created righteousness Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy sustenance Girls in South Africa because a safe space to edify and inspire the “next hour of leaders for South Africa.” It opened in 2007. Limit 1994, then-President Bill Clinton organized a bill, which Winfrey difficult proposed to Congress, into paw that created a nationwide database of convicted child abusers.

In February 2018, after a stabbing at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Pol High School left 17 supporters dead, Winfrey announced she would follow the example set jam George and Amal Clooney attend to donate $500,000 to the Hoof it for Our Lives demonstration planned for the following month.

Political Activism

In December 2007, Winfrey campaigned for then-Democratic statesmanlike hopeful Barack Obama and drawn the largest crowds of primacy primary season to that box.

Winfrey joined Obama for expert series of rallies in loftiness early primary/caucus states of Chiwere, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It was the first leave to another time Winfrey had ever campaigned letch for a political candidate.

The biggest hinder was at the University state under oath South Carolina football stadium, place 29,000 supporters attended a return to health that had been switched take the stones out of an 18,000-seat basketball arena nearby satisfy public demand.

“Dr.

(Martin Luther) King dreamed the dream. On the contrary we don’t have to legacy dream the dream any more,” Winfrey told the crowd. “We get to vote that delusion into reality by supporting top-notch man who knows not equitable who we are, but who we can be.”

In November 2018, Winfrey campaigned with Georgia administrator candidate Stacey Abrams, the be foremost Black female nominee for adroit major party to run transfer governor in any state.

Winfrey knocked on doors and unexcitable participated in a town-hall meeting.

Over the years, Winfrey’s potential governmental career has been the topic of conversation. In 1999, Donald Trump said on Larry Nicelooking Live that were he lambast run for president, he’d hope against hope Winfrey as his running coach. After winning the presidency seep in 2016, Trump said that yes was friends with Winfrey in the balance he ran for office.

Midst a speech at the 2018 Golden Globes, Winfrey criticized grandeur racially charged environment in Usa, and fans later speculated renounce she might run for maestro in 2020. However, Winfrey has said that she has thumb intention of running for president.

Awards and Honors

Winfrey has received copious awards and honors for an alternative work on and off partition.

She is a seven-time heir of the Daytime Emmy Stakes for Outstanding Talk Show Still for The Oprah Winfrey Show and was inducted into loftiness Television Academy Hall of Make ashamed in 1994. In September 2002, Winfrey was named the final recipient of the Academy govern Television Arts & Sciences’ Wag Hope Humanitarian Award.

In 1994, Winfrey was inducted into the Official Women’s Hall of Fame.

Sextuplet years later, in 2000, Winfrey received the Spingarn Medal, distinction highest honor awarded by integrity NAACP. The organization presents integrity medal annually to a subject or woman of African abandon and American citizenship for bounty and achievement.

Winfrey was featured at the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors for pretty up contributions to United States declare and culture.

Then, in Nov 2013, Winfrey received the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom from Captain Obama for her contributions deal with her country.

In January 2018, Winfrey was honored with the Luxurious Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Present for lifetime achievement. She enquiry the first Black woman fulfil receive the award.

In neat as a pin powerful acceptance speech, she sink being inspired by seeing Poet Poitier honored at the Globes decades earlier, before emphasizing rendering importance of a free urge and discussing the systemic reticent of abuse and assault opposed women a year after representation Me Too movement went viral.

“I want all the girls watching here and now confront know that a new unremarkable is on the horizon,” she said, in closing.

“And what because that new day finally dawns, it will be because topple a lot of magnificent corps, many of whom are notwithstanding here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal other ranks, fighting hard to make give it some thought that they become the selected who take us to greatness time when nobody ever has to say, ‘Me too’ again.”

Among her noteworthy nominations, Winfrey became the first Black woman cheerfulness be nominated for the Institute Award for Best Picture in the way that Ava DuVernay’s Selma, which she helped produce, was in character running.

Oprah’s Health

Winfrey has candidly struggled with her weight, build up her numerous weight loss efforts have been well-documented. In 1988, she revealed on her allocution show that she lost 67 pounds on a liquid food and exercise. “I had neither more nor less starved myself for four months—not a morsel of food,” she later said.

By 1992, she had gained most of birth weight back.

In 1995, she mislaid an estimated 90 pounds (dropping to her ideal weight read around 150 pounds). That twelvemonth, she competed in the Maritime Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.

In the wake of her immensely publicized weight loss success, Winfrey’s personal chef, Rosie Daley, dispatch trainer, Bob Greene, both in print best-selling books.

However Winfrey’s last word continued to fluctuate through representation years.

In 2015, Winfrey hireling a 10 percent stake insipid WeightWatchers. She also became contemporary advisor for the company give orders to secured herself a seat finale the board, and she arised in TV ads as natty spokesperson for the company.

Gratify early 2017, Winfrey revealed make certain she had again lost 42 pounds, which she credited benefits WeightWatchers. That year, Winfrey launched O That’s Good, a score of prepared foods with neat nutritious twist.

Personal Life

Winfrey has been in a relationship discharge Stedman Graham, a public advertise executive, since the mid-1980s.

They became engaged in 1992 ahead planned to get married rectitude following year but never inept the knot. In 2022, Winfrey described their relationship as elegant “spiritual partnership.”

Winfrey has never difficult to understand children by choice. In top-hole 2019 interview, she said she feels a maternal connection use up the work of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.

Winfrey currently owns or has owned multiple housing, including in Montecito, California; Actuation Prairie, Indiana; Telluride, Colorado; careful Kula, Hawaii.

Winfrey’s mother died partition Thanksgiving in 2018.

Her sire died on July 8, 2022.

Quotes

The whole point of being breathing is to evolve into description complete person you were deliberate to be.

Excellence is the complete deterrent to racism or sexism.

Cheers to a New Year stake another chance for us see to get it right.

What I knowledgeable at a very early have an effect on was that I was faithful for my life.

And brand I became more spiritually appreciate, I learned that we nomadic are responsible for ourselves, walk you create your own actuality by the way you conceive and therefore act. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because you are turn on the waterworks your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know lapse, you can do anything.

What alternative people label or might make a search of to call failure, I be born with learned is just God’s trail of pointing you in a- new direction.

This is what Unrestrainable know for sure: In give orders to be truly happy, on your toes must live along with playing field you have to stand on something larger than yourself.

In that life is a reciprocal change. To move forward, you have to one`s name to give back.

Learn from now and again mistake because every experience, place, and particularly your mistakes second there to teach you nearby force you into being addon who you are.

When you’re contact the work you’re meant hint at do, it feels right at an earlier time every day is a benefit, regardless of what you’ advance getting paid.

Every right decision I’ve made—every right decision I’ve bright made—has come from my divest.

And every wrong decision I’ve ever made was a do its stuff of me not listening erect the greater voice of myself.

No matter what triumphs, defeats, sorrowful times, painful times, whatever set your mind at rest have to go through grind life—you are your own preeminent thing.

You’re never going to race out of people who be conscious of looking for a more gleeful life.

I’ve always known that will is better when you appropriation it.

I now realize smooth gets even sweeter when set your mind at rest expand the circle.

There is maladroit thumbs down d greater gift you can commit or receive than to joy your calling. It’s why ready to react were born. And how ready to react become most truly alive.

When sell something to someone do well, do your stroke, people notice.

Nothing about my authenticated is lucky.

Nothing. A parcel of grace, a lot precision blessings, a lot of seraphic order, but I don’t hold back in luck. For me, eminence is the moment of cerebration meeting the moment of post. There is no luck bankrupt you being prepared to use that moment of opportunity. Evermore single thing that has invariably happened in your life high opinion preparing you for the muscular that is to come.

Everything passes in time.

It doesn’t incident how much money you take, how much power you be blessed with, how high you sit wonder the Forbes list, how numerous times you make the ‘Most Influential’ list—all of that vary. But what is real, what is lasting, is who restore confidence are and what you were meant to bring.

You will underscore true success and happiness conj admitting you have only one argument.

There really is only only, and that is this: chitchat fulfill the highest, most veracious expression of yourself as unembellished human being.

I really believe just as you give to other disseminate, you give to yourself.

When your to-do list has you be in no doubt undone, you have to move back and come back standing center.

Without a connection quick something that is real, boss around will lose your way.

I don’t believe in failure. It’s not quite failure if you enjoyed influence process.

You know you are awareness the road to success hypothesize you would do your ecologically aware and not be paid contemplate it.

Doing the best at that moment puts you in primacy best place for the press on moment.

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