Winfrey was named "Orpah" after the biblical character in the Book of Ruth on her birth certificate, but people mispronounced it regularly and Oprah stuck.
Oprah was born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi, USA from an unmarried young couple. Originally named as Orpah, the family and people around her often addressed her as Oprah, so she went on to use this particular name. She was nurtured by her paternal grandmother after her parents decided to have a separation. Living at her grandmother's farm in rural Mississippi, she learned to read and practiced recitations at the age of 3. Her serene life became miserable after she moved to her mother's home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1960.
When she was 6, Oprah's grandmother became ill and she was sent to live with her mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There she lived with her mother and half-sister, Patricia, in a boardinghouse. Oprah's mother worked as a maid cleaning houses, but at times had to rely of welfare to support the family. She had little time at home with her children, but when she was able to be there, spent most of her time with Patricia.
At 9 and living in Milwaukee, Oprah and her siblings were left with their cousin to watch them, who was 19 at the time. It was this cousin who sexually abused Oprah for the first time -- she was raped, and then taken out for ice cream and told to keep it a secret -- which she did. She was again abused by a family friend and an uncle a couple of years later -- ongoing abuse that she kept silent
At 13, after suffering years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home.At 14, Oprah discovered she was pregnant, though she hid this news from her parents until she was in her 7th month. The day she told her father the news of her pregnancy, she went into early labor and delivered her baby that day -- a boy, who died within 2 weeks of his birth. She later stated she felt betrayed by the family member who had sold the story to the National Enquirer in 1990.
Her frustrated mother once again sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee, though this time she did not take her back. Vernon was strict, but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, and joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. Her first job as a teenager was working at a local grocery store.
At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant. She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time. She worked there during her senior year of high school, and again while in her first two years of college.
Winfrey's career choice in media would not have surprised her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. Winfrey later acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself". Working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars there.
In 2012, Winfrey decided to quit the show to focus on her own television network, OWN. As with any new venture, it will take time to hire the right team and create a winning product, but Winfrey is undaunted, saying, “I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.”
References: http://ow.ly/Ctj6j, http://ow.ly/CtiYH, http://ow.ly/Ctja3
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