Oprah Winfrey undoubtedly has an incredible success story, but one with many chapters of pain.
Behind the very public persona, there’s a personal life not immune to misfortune.
Here are the tragic things about Oprah Winfrey that everyone just ignores.
Oprah Winfrey might be known as one of the richest women in the United States,
but she didn't grow up with wealth. In fact, she lived in poverty for most of
her childhood. Oprah was born in 1954 when her mother was just a teenager,
and spent her childhood on a small farm located in Mississippi, raised by her grandmother.
Oprah's grandmother wanted one thing for her granddaughter:
for her to become a domestic house worker or maid in an affluent family's home.
Oprah recalled her grandmother saying to her,
"I just hope you get some good white folks when you grow up, treat you right, treat you nice."
But the life of a domestic house worker was not what Oprah had in mind.
She recalled that at just 4 and a half years old, she decided that
she would defy the expectations that her family had for her life.
Oprah Winfrey is known for her steadfastness and her ability to connect, but her life did not start
off on a positive note, and she's shared glimpses into her early life throughout her career. Oprah
revealed during a 2012 lecture series that she had been raped at 9 years old, and the abuse she faced
didn't stop there. Oprah continued to be sexually and physically assaulted from ages 10 to 14.
Oprah said of her experiences,
"Anybody who has been verbally abused or physically abused will spend a great
deal of their life rebuilding their esteem." Oprah Winfrey revealed on her show that she was
just 14 years old when her mother took her to live in a group home full of other young girls.
But living in the home was short-lived, and Oprah went to live with her father.
Unlike her mother, who kicked Oprah out of the house, Oprah's father had extremely high
expectations of his daughter. As noted by The Guardian, Oprah's father expected his
daughter to pull good grades at school. Not only that, but Oprah was not allowed to date.
But what her father didn't know was that when she moved in with him,
Oprah was already pregnant. Things only got more tragic from there.
Getting pregnant at just 14 years old sent Oprah Winfrey on a downward
spiral. She revealed while appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight in 2011
that she became promiscuous after years of sexual abuse.
"I knew that me getting pregnant was a result of bad choices,
and not having boundaries, and the abuse —"
Oprah further explained that the rules set by her father added pressure,
because her father has once said
"I would rather see a daughter of mine floating down the Cumberland River than
to bring shame on this family and the indecency of an illegitimate child."
Oprah confessed that she was scared about her fate,
thinking that she would have to end her life given the circumstances. She told David Letterman that
she buried her feelings about what had happened before realizing that she could start over.
She said,
“I really felt like that baby’s life — that baby coming into the world — really
gave me new life. That’s how I processed it for myself.”
Oprah's ordeal ended in another kind of tragedy, when her baby,
who was born prematurely, died at two weeks old.
If you think that someone as iconic as Oprah Winfrey had it easy in her career,
you're wrong. According to the Chicago Tribune,
Oprah's first gig as a news anchor in Baltimore, Maryland didn't go well.
While reporting a story about a house fire that turned deadly,
Oprah started crying on air. In the span of one news hour, Oprah said "Canada" wrong
three different times. She would also reportedly get on the nerves of the newsroom writers because
she would go off script, and once her hair started to fall out because she had gotten a bad perm.
It's fair to say that the news business was not the best fit for Oprah,
which she's admitted on multiple occasions.
Oprah said that she was too empathetic for the news industry,
that she would get emotionally attached to the stories and people that she covered.
It was after her time as a news anchor came to a close
that Oprah made her first appearance on the talk show People Are Talking.
While she was the co-host of People Are Talking, she found out that her male co-host
was making more money than she was. So what did Oprah do? She approached her boss about it.
In an appearance at Stanford University, she recalled to the audience,
"I'm going to go, and I'm going to stand up for myself. I said, 'Richard's making more money than
I am and I don't think that's fair because we're doing the same job, we sit on the same show.'"
In a shocking turn, instead of agreeing to give her a raise,
her boss asked Oprah if she had children, if she owned a home,
or had to put children through college. Oprah said no, and the man said,
"So tell me, why do you need the same amount of money?"
Oprah said that the blatant sexism was enough for her to say goodbye to the job.
She told the audience,
"I said, 'Thank you for your time,' and I left.
I knew that in that moment it was time for me to go."
During a 1995 episode that centered around people recovering from drug abuse,
Oprah revealed that she had used cocaine when she was in her 20s,
after being convinced to do so by her boyfriend at the time.
Oprah talked about her experience with drugs again while talking with Today in 2005,
saying that she was, quote, "more addicted to the boyfriend" than she was to any substance.
She told Today,
"The admission to using drugs on television was the biggest thing."
At the time of the admission, her audience knew she had a lot to lose.
Oprah Winfrey is one of the most recognizable figures in American media,
but she's experienced racist incidents throughout her life. In an interview with Larry King,
Oprah recalled that she and a friend were walking down Madison Avenue in New York City,
after seeing a show on Broadway. A sweater in a store window caught Oprah's eye,
but as the two went to enter the store, the associates wouldn't open the doors.
Oprah took matters into her own hands — she crossed the street to a payphone
and called the store, asking if they were open. The associate said yes,
and Oprah made her way back over. But still the store workers refused to open the doors.
Oprah said of the incident,
"We had seen, on the way across the street, these two white women go in the store.
Suddenly it dawns on the both of us... Oh my God, I think we're having a racist moment!"
Oprah called later and complained, with the store telling her that they hadn't opened the
doors because, quote, "two black people had robbed the store a week earlier." As compensation, the
store offered to give Oprah the sweater for free. Her response? She told them to keep the sweater.
Oprah Winfrey's family members haven't always been the most supportive people in her life.
In 2007, The New York Daily News revealed that Oprah's father, Vernon,
was planning a book. Oprah said she could hardly believe it when she heard the news.
She said,
"One of my assistants said, 'The Daily News is calling. They say they heard your father
is writing a book about you.' I said, 'That's impossible. I can assure them it's not true.'"
The worst part of the whole situation, according to Oprah, was what her father
said when she approached him about the book. She recounted,
"I called him and it turned out he is writing a book. The worst part of it was him saying,
'I meant to tell you I've been working on it.' I was upset. I
won't say 'devastated,' but I was stunned."
The book, however, was never published.
Oprah Winfrey's mother died at the age of 83, after a period of declining health.
Oprah told People that she was sitting in hospice care with her mother,
reading a book about how to say goodbye.
She said in the interview,
"I thought, 'Isn't this strange? I am Oprah Winfrey,
and I'm reading a hospice care book on what to say at the end."
Oprah recounted that, before she flew to Boston to give a talk, she stood in the doorway of her
mother's room and, quote, "knew it was going to be the last time [they] said goodbye."
Oprah soon returned to her mother's room for one last talk.
The one thing that helped Oprah through such a difficult goodbye was music. She
played her mother's favorite singer, Joshua Nelson, while they were together.
Oprah also thanked her mom for having the strength to have a baby as a teenager,
and expressed her gratitude for her mother's efforts in her life, telling her,
"I know that you always did the best you knew how to do. And look how it turned out."
If you thought the racism Oprah Winfrey faced in New York was bad, that wasn’t the worst of
it. Oprah was in Zurich, Switzerland when she experienced racism from another store clerk.
Oprah recounted to Entertainment Tonight that she went into a store
and asked the saleswoman if she could see a $38,000 Tom Ford purse.
"And she says to me, 'no, it's too expensive."
When she asked to see the purse again, the sales associate doubled down.
"And she said, 'No no no, you don't want to see that one, you want to see this one,
because that one will cost too much and you will not be able to afford that."
Although the store's owner denied that the incident had anything to do with race,
Oprah cited the incident as an example of how her experience of racism often isn't direct.
“Nobody in their right mind, unless they're a Twitter thug, is gonna call me the N-word."
Oprah Winfrey has never backed down from a topic because it's controversial,
but her tactics of approaching stories head-on led to entertainment industry figures attacking her
and her colleague Gayle King. Oprah faced public criticism from Snoop Dogg due to her questioning
of prominent Black men, including Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson, whose legacies are complicated.
Before calling King a nasty name, Snoop said on social media,
"Why are y'all attacking us? We your people."
Snoop doubled down on attacking Oprah and her legacy, calling her out in an
Instagram post for her relationship with defamed media mogul Harvey Weinstein.
In the profanity-laced caption, he called for Bill Cosby to be freed.
Of course, both Weinstein and Cosby's careers went into freefall after women
publicly accused them of sexual assault. Both were sent to prison,
but Cosby's conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
It's remarkable to discover you have distant cousins and family members,
but imagine finding out that you have a sibling who lives just 90 minutes away from you.
"This is my sister."
Oprah's half-sister, Patricia, had been given up for adoption in 1963.
Oprah — who was 9 at the time — was living with her father.
"I had no idea that my mother had given up a baby in 1963."
Oprah said in 2011,
"Imagine my shock just a few months ago, at the end of October, when I found out I have another
sister. For the most part, my life has been an open book, and on the show I think I've seen about
everything. And I thought nothing could surprise me anymore, but let me tell you, I was wrong."
Oprah said that the news left her, quote, "speechless."
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