11Oprah's Beauty Pageant Awards
At the age of 17, Oprah Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant. She also won the “Miss Fire Prevention” award in 1971.
12Oprah, Highest-Paid Entertainer
Oprah Winfrey was the highest-paid television entertainer in the USA in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell.
13Oprah Winfrey's Networth
Born in poverty, Oprah Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show received national syndication. At the age of 41, she had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. By 2000, with a net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American of the 20th century. As of January 2022, she had a net worth of $2.6 billion.
14Oprah-Roger Relationship
In the mid-1980s, Oprah Winfrey briefly dated Film critic Roger Ebert, who persuaded her to syndicate The Oprah Winfrey Show. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, “At the Movies.”
15Oprah's First Job
Oprah Winfrey landed her first job in radio while she was still in high school. By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news in Nashville, Tennessee.
16Oprah's Sister
In 2011, Oprah Winfrey found out she has a sister she never knew existed and now takes care of her financially because Oprah was so impressed by her sister’s loyalty. She had spent 4 years trying to contact Oprah with no luck and never once tried to sell the story to the press.
17Oprah, The Preacher
Oprah’s grandmother taught her to read before the age of 3 and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed “The Preacher” for her uncanny ability to recite Bible verses.
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18Oprah's Early Pregnancy
Due to sexual abuse during her early teenage years, Oprah Winfrey became pregnant at the age of 14. Her son was born prematurely and died in infancy. She once said in an interview that she felt betrayed by one of her family members who had sold the story of her son to the National Enquirer in 1990.
19Oprah Bill
Over the course of her 25 years hosting The Oprah Winfrey Show (1986), Oprah taped 217 episodes dedicated to sexual abuse, having been a survivor of such abuse herself as a young girl. She was instrumental in the passage of the Oprah Bill, in the early 1990s. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and is aimed at stopping child abuse.
20Oprah, The Runaway
At the age of 13, after suffering what she described as years of abuse, Oprah Winfrey ran away from her home.
