Oprah Winfrey

After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963).

Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her.

Her grandmother 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.

When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother was reportedly abusive.

At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, largely as a result of the long hours she worked as a maid.

Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022) was a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born.

Vernita Lee (1935–2018) was a housemaid.

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor.

Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and "Oprah" stuck.

She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenaged mother, Vernita Lee, and father Vernon Winfrey.

Winfrey's parents never married.

By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters, so Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee.

While Winfrey was in Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter, who was put up for adoption in the hopes of easing the financial straits that had led to Lee's being on welfare, and was later also named Patricia.

She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.

Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire.

Winfrey has stated she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first announced on a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse.

A biographer alleged that when Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, they reportedly refused to believe her account.

By the time Winfrey moved back with her mother, Lee had also given birth to Winfrey's half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.

At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church.

By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality.

Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and having an emotion-centered approach, she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

She has received honorary doctorate degrees from multiple universities.

Winfrey has won many awards throughout her career, including 18 Daytime Emmy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award), two Primetime Emmy Awards (including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award), a Tony Award, a Peabody Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award awarded by the Academy Awards, in addition to two competitive Academy Award nominations.

Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.

Around this time, Lee had given birth to another daughter, Winfrey's younger half-sister, Patricia, who died of causes related to cocaine addiction in February 2003 at age 43.

A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia.

Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian.

However, given the imprecision of genetic testing, the East Asian markers may actually be Native American.

By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee.

She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy.

Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school.

By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news.

Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.

Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, Winfrey popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.

Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

In the same year, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

Winfrey did not know that she had a second half-sister until 2010.

In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.