• March 15, 1999

Oprah Winfrey

By Lisa Russell

Issues and Answers? She Gives Voice to Both

A poor single mother from the Chicago area trudged over to that city's Hyatt Regency hotel for the much-publicized 1994 charity auction of Oprah Winfrey's hand-me-down clothes. She was looking for a shred of hope among the cast-off Armanis and Valentinos, but all she could afford was a $5 pair of size 10 shoes that fit like boats on her size 7 feet. Later, she met her idol after an Oprah taping and confessed, "Sometimes I go in the closet when I'm feeling down and I stand in your shoes." Winfrey, who is reportedly worth $675 million after years of talking, is quiet for a heartbeat. "That story makes me want to weep," she says. "It makes me think I must be doing something right."

Since 1985, when AM Chicago was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey has been at the top of her game. But it was not until 1998, when she began steering her audience of 33 million soulmates toward the brand of spiritual self-actualization that she dubbed "Change Your Life TV," that the Queen of Daytime has proved how truly powerful she is.

Winfrey's own views hold such tremendous sway that Texas cattlemen sued her (unsuccessfully) for libel after she questioned the safety of beef. The books she features on her monthly book-club segment, such as Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone and buddy Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, are virtually guaranteed to be bestsellers. And when she asked viewers to hand over their spare change for her piggy-bank campaign to fund scholarships, more than $1 million came rolling in. "I'm not trying to be some evangelist," says Winfrey, 45. "The intention is to try and get people to feel some illumination." Sometimes she tries to lighten them up as well. After Winfrey wondered aloud, in 1996, why Frito-Lay wasn't making their low-fat baked potato chips with ridges, an Oprah-friendly version was rushed into development.

Still, it's not Oprah the big shot but Oprah the girlfriend who makes the show work. Though she has her own chef, a personal trainer, a luxurious Michigan Avenue apartment and a vast Indiana farm, what she relishes most, as she often reminds her disciples, are weekends when she can gobble up three books "and never take off my pj's." She has also let the world in on her rags-to-riches history: Born illegitimate into poverty in Kosciusko, Miss., she survived sexual abuse, rape and the death of an infant she bore at age 14. "It's a wonder she's not off in a corner drooling," says longtime friend Gayle King, a Hartford, Conn., newscaster. Instead, "she has not only made it—she has flourished." Though "very generous with her time, her feelings and the things she likes," according to King, Oprah admits to holding one thing back: "TV doesn't let me be as funny as I would be in real life. I'm a hoot. I crack myself up."

That sense of humor was no doubt tested last year by the box office failure of Beloved, which Winfrey produced and starred in. The movie (based on Toni Morrison's novel about a former slave) was beaten by Bride of Chucky. "Ouch, that hurt!" she says. "I'm still smarting from it." However, a five-year deal with Disney ensures that her film career, begun in 1985 with an Oscar-nominated turn in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple, is not over yet.

Neither is speculation about whether she will marry marketing exec Stedman Graham, 48, her fiancé of seven years. She has, however, announced a date—2002—when she'll give up what she calls her "grueling" daily forum and concentrate on Oxygen Media, a new partnership with TV execs Marcy Carsey and Geraldine Laybourne dedicated to starting a female-oriented cable channel. "It will be an avenue for me to continue to influence women to better themselves," says Winfrey, who has benefited dramatically from her own self-help. "The show has been great for me—behavioral science on a daily basis. I've never had a day of therapy."

Lisa Russell
Cindy Dampier in Chicago

• Contributors:
• Cindy Dampier.