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King was formerly the host of The Gayle King Show and is currently an editor of O, the Oprah Magazine. Winfrey has also had a long friendship with Maria Shriver, after they met in Baltimore. Winfrey considered Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her mentor and close friend; she called Angelou her “mother-sister-friend”. Since 1997, when Winfrey played the therapist on an episode of the sitcom Ellen in which Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet, Winfrey and King have been the target of persistent rumors that they were gay. Winfrey says in the August 2006 issue of O magazine. Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for 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.
Born in rural poverty, and raised by a mother dependent on government welfare payments in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show received national syndication. Winfrey negotiated ownership rights to the television program and started her own production company. By 2000, with a net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American of the 20th century.
Oprah’s extensive and continuously evolving real-estate portfolio has garnered heightened attention throughout her life and career, with many prominent industry outlets branding her a “tycoon” regarding her investments which as of 2022, are estimated to total approximately $127 million. As her talk-show was beginning, Oprah first purchased a condominium in Chicago’s Water Tower Place in 1985, before purchasing the condos adjoining and directly below it in 1992, 1993, and 1994, respectively.
In 1988, she purchased an 164-acre property including main and guest residences, orchard, and stables in Rolling Prairie, Indiana as her weekend refuge. Between 1996 and 2000 she purchased a total of five condos in different development areas of Fisher Island, Florida. In 1992, she purchased an 80-acre compound in Telluride, Colorado, which she would go on to sell in approximately late 2000. In 1994, she also purchased an apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel Chicago.
Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. Winfrey’s syndicated show brought in double Donahue’s national audience, displacing Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey’s swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. Their much-publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. It was then renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and expanded to a full hour. What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy.
Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school. Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries. By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. In 2008, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
