Oprah Winfrey

American talk show hostess, actress and business executive. Born illegitimate and virtually abandoned in the Deep South, she is a living symbol of the self-made person in spite of all odds. She is one of the best known and highest paid entertainers of the '90s with her TV talk show and business ventures. Raised at first by her grandmother on a farm, she was then shuffled between her mom and various kin. She was raped at nine and had five subsequent years of sexual abuse, leading to adolescent rebellion and lifelong insecurity. She gave birth to a baby boy when she was just 14. The baby died after two weeks from complications of being born two months premature. Ambitious and precocious, she won two beauty titles while in University and by 19, became a CBS news journalist. She left college to become the first female and the first black newscaster in Nashville, earning $15,000 a year. Articulate, highly intelligent, she moved into her own show in Baltimore, "People Are Talking," negotiated April 1977. Working her way into a position as one of the most popular hosts in American TV, she made a national debut of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" 9/08/1986. By 1999, her fortune was estimated at $415 million, making her one of America's richest women. She and Stedman Graham taught a ten-week class at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in IL. For the fall of '99. Student selection for the class was only 110 and Oprah found herself nervous while teaching the "Dynamics of Leadership." She claimed that she was not used to the "one-on-one of an audience paying to hear you say something meaningful." In April 2000, she announced the upcoming release of her new magazine, "O," which is in partnership with Hearst Corp. and will have edits from her show, as well as inspiring quotations. Left handed, she fought a long battle with weight to become trim and stylish with daily physical activity and careful diet. Winfrey made a screen debut in Spielberg's "The Color Purple," 1958, for which she won award nominations. Her relationships with men tended to be unstable before she met 6' 6" PR executive Stedman Graham. They began dating in May 1986. Happy together, they became engaged in mid-October 1992. By 1998, a marriage seemed unlikely, or perhaps unnecessary. Oprah's secretary gets an itinerary from Stedman's secretary so they can keep track of where each other will be. Despite their grueling schedules, the two are able to spend some time together at any one of her homes; a 25-room condo in Chicago, an 85-acre ranch in Telluride, CO, an island retreat near Miami or at her 160-acre Indiana ranch. She achieved another "personal best" when she was included for the first time in the "Forbes" magazine list of billionaires announced on February 27, 2003. After an investment of $40 million, Oprah Winfrey officially opened a school in Henly-on-Klip, South Africa on January 2, 2007. She called the school for 152 impoverished girls aged 11 and 12 “the fulfillment of my work on earth.” On November 19, 2009 an announcement was made that her popular daytime television show would end on September 9, 2011 after 25 years of daily broadcasts. A day later at the end of her daily show, Oprah tearfully confirmed her intention to go on to other projects in 2011. Link to Wikipedia biography Link to Astrodienst discussion forum