Oprah Can Live Without Wedding Ring

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/05/2001 at 01:00 AM EDT

When, oh when, will Oprah Winfrey marry her long, long, longtime steady, public relations executive Stedman Graham, 50? Well, don't hold your breath. The queen of all media, 47, told CNN's Larry King on Tuesday night, "I don't know the answer to that question. For the past 15, 16 years the answer has been no." She did concede that the relationship between the two of them "has gotten . . . increasingly better over the years in terms of us bonding and supporting one another." She said one of the many issues they deal with constantly is not having him pegged as merely being Oprah's boyfriend. But the role model added that marriage has never been important to her. "It was only important to me to be wanted enough to be married," she said. "But I think the relationship as it is works really, really solidly well." Asked why she thinks fans are so obsessed over her unmarried state, Winfrey responded that people do not care if she's happily married, they just want a wedding. "They want doves to fly," she said. "They want to know what I wore, how much you spend on the cake, who came." Not that a lack of a wedding ring is cramping Oprah's style. As PEOPLE reported in July, the TV host with the most just slapped down an estimated $50 million for a 42-acre spread in Montecito, Calif., near Santa Barbara, with panoramic views of the Santa Ynez mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Winfrey also owns a Chicago penthouse, a 160-acre Indiana farm, a house in Tennessee and a Wisconsin condo.