Winfrey biography

She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show , broadcast from Chicago , which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from to 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'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, [ 12 ] she launched her own production company. Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication, [ 13 ] Winfrey popularized and revolutionized [ 13 ] [ 14 ] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.

Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, [ 15 ] and having an emotion-centered approach, [ 16 ] she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. In , she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Oprah winfrey daughter age

Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, ; 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. Winfrey's parents never married. 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, — February 27, Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her.