Ilene Cooper - Oprah Winfrey

Showtime

Oprah Winfrey started as the host of A.M. Chicago on January 2, 1984. A curly-haired woman in a big fur coat, she introduced herself outside the WLS-TV studios with the University of Illinois marching band blaring out a welcome behind her. Chicago had little time to ask itself, Whats an Oprah? She took the city by storm, and within a month, almost everyone in the city knew who she was.

Oprah had auditioned for the job in the fall of 1983. Station manager Dennis Swanson had her sit in front of a camera and chat about herself and her interests. After she was finished, Oprah met with Swanson in his office. Even though he was delighted with her audition, he felt that he couldnt totally show his enthusiasm. After all, he was going to have to negotiate a salary with her as soon as he offered her the job.

How do you think it went? Oprah asked.

I think it went pretty well, he replied. But he was thinking that Oprahs was the greatest audition tape he had ever seen.

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Oprah

Winfrey

a twentieth-century life by

ILENE COOPER

PUFFIN BOOKS

PUFFIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the United States of America by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Ilene Cooper, 2007

All rights reserved

Photo credits can be found on page 207.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-65225-1

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Book design by Jim Hoover

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Oprah Winfrey

WHEN I WAS ASKED by Viking Childrens Books to do a biography for their new Up Close series, the editor wondered if I would be interested in writing about Oprah Winfrey. Youve come to the right place, I assured her. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I remember very well when Oprah arrived in Chicago in 1984 to host a local talk show, A.M. Chicago. It is no over-statement to say she took the town by storm.

How and why exactly that happened is explored in this biography. Certainly there was an element of novelty involved. Yet it was not just that Oprah Winfrey was an African American in a medium that was mostly white, or that she was a plus-size woman in a business where thinness is prized. Oprah has a rare and special talentan ability to communicate with her audience so intimately that it makes her seem more like a friend than a broadcaster. Chicago had never seen anyone quite like Oprah Winfrey, and people across the country and throughout the world felt the same once her show became nationally and then globally syndicated.

Over the more than twenty years that Oprah Winfrey has been in Chicago, she and her show have evolved, both becoming ever more influential. Though now an international celebrity, Oprah began as a local star, and I feel as if Ive had a ringside seat watching her rise into the stratosphere. Yet as Ive come to know her better while writing this book, what I ultimately admire most about Oprah is her commitment to doing good. This quality has inspired millions of people throughout the world to get involved, to think about others, and to find ways to solve problems. As Oprah herself has said, The happiness you feel is in direct proportion to the love you are able to give. It is this message I hope readers take away from Oprahs story.

OPRAH WINFREY WAS being given another chance. In 1976, only twenty-two years old, she had been hired to be a newscaster in Baltimore on WJZ-TV. But things hadnt worked out very well. The station had paired her up with an older, well-established broadcaster who didnt want a coanchor at all, and certainly not a young black woman whose TV experience had come in the small TV market of Nashville.

The mismatch showed on the air. To make things worse, the station management was having big doubts about Oprah herself. They didnt appreciate her casual speaking style, so different from the formality broadcasters showed on a nightly news show. Nor did her bosses like the way she looked. They suggested changes in her appearance with sometimes disastrous resultslike the time they wanted her hair straightened, and it all fell out!

Soon Oprah was removed from her anchor chair and sent out to be a street reporter, frequently covering murders and natural disasters. Those assignments didnt work out either. Oprah hated having to shove a microphone in the face of someone who had just suffered a tragedy.

Oprah Winfrey could see the writing on the wall. Surely, she was about to be fired. Then something unexpected happened. WJZ-TV was planning a new program, an interview show called People Are Talking, and Oprah was named the cohost. Wearing a pretty pink dress and flashing a big smile, she eagerly started her new assignment. By the time the first show was over, she realized the immediate impact it had made on her life.

I came off of that stage August 14, 1978, and I knew that I was home. In all my years of being discontent, feeling like somethings not quite right, feeling like I was in the wrong place, in the wrong job, I knew this is it. It felt like home because it felt so natural. It felt like I could be myself.

Oprah Winfrey was now a talk-show host, and the world of television would never quite be the same again.

IT WAS A COLD day on a lonesome Mississippi farm. Four-year-old Oprah Winfrey sat on the back porch, churning up some butter for the family table and watching as her grandmother poked at clothes floating in an old black pot. Wooden clothespins decorated Grandma Hattie Mae Lees apron. As she lifted the heavy, wet laundry out of the water and hung each piece on the line, Hattie told her granddaughter, Pay attention now. Youre going to have to learn to do this someday.