• June 23, 1997
• Vol. 47
• No. 24

Nope, She's Not Gay

Oprah Winfrey Unequivocally Quashes Questions About Her Sexuality

AS MEDIA GOSSIP GOES, IT WAS the equivalent of wildfire—sudden, swift and hot, hot, hot. On June 3 the rumor swept newsrooms across the country: Oprah Winfrey, 43, was about to displace Ellen DeGeneres as America's biggest openly gay star. She was going to tell all to Newsweek. No, wait—the E! channel was going to "out" her first.

By the next day, her office swamped with calls from reporters, Winfrey, who had already fielded similar questions from her studio audience, took the offensive. "I am not in the closet," the never-married entertainer said in a statement. "I am not coming out of the closet. I am not gay." The same day, addressing 7,000 media executives convened in Chicago, she delivered the same message: "I have nowhere to go to come out to 'cause I'm not gay."

Businessman Stedman Graham, 46, Winfrey's longtime boyfriend, has also had enough with the rumors. "She's not [gay]," Graham told PEOPLE. "Oprah knows who she is."

But what got everyone into such a lather? A likely factor, Winfrey concedes, was her cameo on the April 30 "gay" episode of ABC's Ellen. Then, in the beginning of May, Howard Stern told radio listeners to expect big news soon from the talk show host. Winfrey herself may have stirred up anticipation: With her contract due to expire in 1998, she has lately hinted she may be ready to retire the show.

But she pointed to a titillating item in Liz Smith's syndicated column as the real tongue-loosener. Smith wrote on April 28: "One of the biggest and longest-running TV stars...is seriously contemplating making the same move" as DeGeneres. This "icon and role model," Smith went on, would set off the "furor to end all furors."

Smith professes surprise that speculation focused on the big O. "Where people got such a wiggy idea I don't know," she says. "I've never thought Oprah was gay." Whom did Smith mean, then? She's not saying.