Oprah Winfrey is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist who is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Her show, during its 25-year run, was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history.
Oprah Winfrey mother: Vernita Lee
Oprah Winfrey was born Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to an unmarried teenage mother.
Her first name was actually spelled Orpah on her birth certificate, but people mispronounced it regularly and the name “Oprah” stuck.
Her mother, Vernita Lee, was a housemaid. After her birth, her mother traveled north, where she spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee.
When she was six, they moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Around the same time, Lee gave birth to Winfrey’s younger half-sister, Patricia. She later died of causes related to cocaine addiction in February 2003 at age 43.
However, her mother was finding difficulty raising both children, so was temporarily sent to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee.
Lee gave birth to two other children. Another half-sister was put up for adoption and also named Patricia and a half-brother named Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.
