Oprah Winfrey: The Queen of Talk Shows

Very few people in show business have had the impact that Oprah Winfrey has had on the American public. Not to mention the rest of the world. Since The Oprah Winfrey Show premiered in 1985, she has tackled almost every issue in the news, interviewed just about everyone in Hollywood and made a difference is many, many lives.

Oprah Winfrey did not have an easy childhood. Her early years, up to age 6 were spent with her grandmother in Kosciusko, Mississippi. She then went to live with her mother in Chicago until she was 13. Then, because of abuse, she went to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey in Nashville. To say her father was strict is putting it mildly, but he had an impact on her life that made her always strive to do her best.

Maybe because of the way she grew up, Oprah Winfrey grew up fast and actually started in show business at the young age of 17. Her first job was at WVOL radio in Nashville followed 2 years later with an anchor position at WTVF-TV in Nashville. Meanwhile she managed to study Speech Communications and Performing Arts at Tennessee State University.

Oprah Winfrey had two other positions before she arrived in Chicago and started to make history. In 1976, she joined WJZ-TV news in Baltimore as a co-anchor, and in 1978 she tried her hand at talk shows when she became co-host of WJZ-TV's "People Are Talking,. And evidently she enjoyed this change from doing the news because in 1984 she came to Chicago and took a talk show, AM Chicago, that was going nowhere and took it to the top of the ratings chart. It went national as the Oprah Winfrey show in 1986 and has not stopped since.

Oprah Winfrey is also an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated actress with performances in such movies as "The Color Purple." and "Native Son", She also has her own production company HARPO Productions, which, in addition to producing The Dr. Phil and Rachel Ray shows has produced the mini series "The Women of Brewster Place," and the TV movies "There Are No Children Here" (1993), and "Before Women Had Wings"(1997). She has also co founded a cable network ,Oxygen Media, produced The Color Purple on Broadway and has her own Magazine "O" .

Oprah Winfrey has won many awards for her charity work, has been named woman of the year, been named one of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world, been inducted into the NAACP'S Hall of Fame. The list goes on and on includes awards from both show business and charitable organizations. In 2005, Business Week ranked her as the greatest Black philanthropist in American history. And probably one of the most fun things she has ever done, she is the voice of Goosy Goose in the new Charlotte's Web movie.

Today Oprah and her two Cocker Spaniels, Sophie and Soloman, enjoy living in her numerous homes, her 42 acre estate in Montecito, California in addition to her a house in Lavallette, New Jersey, an apartment in Chicago, an estate on Fisher Island off the coast of Miami, a ski house in Telluride, CO and property on the island of Maui, Hawaii.

She has had a steady companion, Stedman Graham, for the past 20 years, defiantly a different relationship than any other in her life. Oprah has admitted to doing things in her youth that she is not proud of, including doing drugs while in her 20's, but she overcame everything negative in her life to become one of the most admired and respected people in the world.