• Home
• Bio-sketches
• MY GP DATA-CENTER
• Register
• Support Network
• Contact Us

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey was born January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi to unmarried teenage parents. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid. Her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a coal miner and later worked as a barber before becoming a city council person. He was in the Armed Forces when she was born.

Despite everything, She Excelled

After her birth, Oprah's mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her Grandma Hattie Mae who taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses.

At age six 1/2, Winfrey moved to a Milwaukee inner city ghetto with her mother who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother. Winfrey has stated that she was raped by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend.

Despite her dysfunctional home life, Oprah skipped two of her earliest grades, became the teacher's pet, and by the time she was thirteen received a scholarship to attend a prestigious all white high school in the suburbs.

Like a lot of teenagers at the end of the 1960s, Oprah rebelled, ran way from home, and ran the streets. At age 14 her frustrated mother sent her to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee.

Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted "Most Popular Girl", joined her high school speech team, and placed 2nd in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communications. At age 18, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.

Multi-media Triumph

Her media career began at age seventeen, working at a local radio station while attending Tennessee State University. Later, working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WTVF-TV. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news, subsequently joining Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show.

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. Within months, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986.

Oprah's film career began in 1985 when she co-starred in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of Alice Walker's award-winning novel, The Color Purple. She earned immediate acclaim as Sofia, the distraught housewife. In October 1998, Oprah's Harpo Productions produced, and she starred in, the film Beloved, based upon Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Winfrey also publishes two magazines: O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home. In 2002, Fortune magazine called O the most successful start-up ever in the industry.

What's It All About?

Making A Difference

In 1998, Oprah began Oprah's Angel Network, a charity aimed at encouraging people around the world to make a difference in the lives of the underprivileged. The Angel Network supports charitable projects and provides grants to nonprofit organizations around the world that share this vision. Oprah personally covers all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised go to charity programs.

Although Winfrey is known for raising money through her public charity, behind the scenes Winfrey personally donates more of her own money to charity than any other show business celebrity in America. In 2005 she became the first black listed by Business Week as one of America's top 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $250 million. Despite being the 235th richest American in 2005, Winfrey was the 32nd most philanthropic.

In Her Own Words:

Thoughts on What’s Really Important In Life

Recently, Oprah Winfrey was interviewed by the Academy Of Achievement. Here are some of her thoughts, especially for young people.

On Education & Reading: “For me, education is about the most important thing because that is what liberated me. The ability to read saved my life. I would have been an entirely different person had I not been taught to read when I was an early age. My entire life experience, my ability to believe in myself, and even in my darkest moments of sexual abuse and being physically abused and so forth, I knew there was another way. I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being. It saved my life, so that's why I now focus my attention on trying to do the same thing for other people.”

On Money: “What I know is, is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come. I truly believe that the reason I've been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute, been on money. And the fact that the money has come has really surprised me. But the money has never been the focus.

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it. It's like being able to say, 'I would do this job and take on a second job to make ends meet, even if nobody paid me - just for the opportunity to do it!' If you can say that, that's how you know you are doing the right thing.”

On What Makes A Fulfilling Life: “I think the most important thing to get ahead falls back to what I truly believe in, and that is the ability to seek truth in your life. That's on all forms. You have to be honest with yourself. You can be pursuing a profession because your parents say it's the best thing, because you think you will make a lot of money, or because you think you are going to get a lot of attention. None of that will do you any good if you are not being honest with yourself.”

[To read the entire Academy Of Achievement interview with Oprah Winfrey, click this link.]