Oprah's Big House

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday June 21, 2001 10:00 AM EDT

Oprah Winfrey, 45, has some decorating to do. The queen of media has closed a $50 million deal for a 42-acre estate in California's Montecito, reports the Los Angeles Times. The property, which Oprah reportedly first spotted when she was at a nearby photo shoot for her O magazine, has both mountain and ocean views. The former owner was Southern California industrialist Robert Veloz and his wife, Marlene, who have been living in the property's 2,000-sq.-ft. stone gatehouse since the structure was built a year ago. (They plan to vacate by July, says the Times.) The Velozes had bought the property for $14 million in 1998, shortly after the death of previous owner Eloise Bacon, who died at the age of 100. She and her husband, John Bacon (a scion of the Libby-Owens Ford glass company fortune, who died in 1964), have owned the land since 1934. A new 23,000-sq.-ft. Georgian-style house on the property is still six months away from completion.