How Oprah went from wearing potato sacks to the top of the world

It’s hard not to be inspired by Oprah Winfrey and her journey. This is a woman who has been through it all. As a child she lived with multiple family members who could not afford to buy her new clothes. At 9 years old she began being molested by uncles and cousins. Her mother kicked her out of the house at 14 years old, the same time that she learned she was pregnant.

Yet she rose to the very top of fame and fortune. Oprah’s name is now synonymous with success and giving. She has built an incredible legacy, and the path she took to get there is fascinating.

Once Oprah’s young mother felt ready to take her back, Oprah moved out of her grandmother’s house and in with her mother. When Oprah returned to live with her mother, life took a dark turn. She was still living in poverty, but now she couldn’t even feel safe in her own home. Starting at age 9, Oprah was sexually abused by family members and eventually became pregnant at age 14. It was at that time that she first considered suicide.

“I hit rock-bottom,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter. “I became pregnant and hid the pregnancy. I’d intended to kill myself actually. I thought there’s no way other than killing myself. I was just planning on how to do it. If I’d had the Internet, I might not be alive because now you can just Google how to do it.”

During her pregnancy, her mother actually decided to kick her out of the house. She was supposed to go to a detention center for girls, but fortunately they were full and could not accept her. It was at this time that she was sent to live with her father, who helped her turn things around.

It’s hard to believe that the suicidal and pregnant 14 year-old was able to turn her life around, but she did. Oprah started trusting herself and her own instincts and followed her passions to the public eye. “I haven’t planned one thing — ever. I have just been led by a strong instinct, and I have made choices based on what was right for me at the time,” she told Makers.

Oprah started participating in beauty pageants and she went on to win the title of Miss Black Tennessee in 1972 when she was 17. Once Oprah got the taste of the limelight, there was no turning back.

After getting started as a Nashville news anchor, Oprah moved to Baltimore in 1976 and, at first, continued working in evening news. She began her time in Baltimore as the co-anchor of WJZ’s 6 p.m. weekday newscast alongside Jerry Turner. Unfortunately, as she told the Baltimore Sun, Turner didn’t make it easy for her. 

“First of all, he wanted to be alone from the beginning. And then, if he had to have a co-host, he didn’t want a young, green-behind-the-ears one like me,” Winfrey told the Baltimore Sun. “At every chance he could get, he would embarrass me or, like, try to make me feel bad about where I went to school. That’s when I first learned that, oh, where you went to school is an important thing, because he’d go, ‘Where’d you go to school again? What little college or university?’ So I would have to say my memories of Jerry Turner are not fond ones.”

But then Oprah made the switch to morning television when she signed on for the role of co-host of Baltimore’s People Are Talking. Going from news to talk show turned out to be exactly what Oprah needed.

Oprah’s talk show success gained attention from executives all over the entertainment world, including director Steven Spielberg. She was cast in the 1985 film The Color Purple and even received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. Oprah revealed just how much she wanted a part in this movie. “I always wanted to be an actress. I never wanted anything in my life more than I wanted to be in The Color Purple,” Winfrey told Variety. “And have never allowed myself to want anything as much again.”

Oprah wanted to be in the movie so much, that compared to what she was making for her talk show, she took a serious pay cut to be part of it. Oprah went on to act in a few more films after that, but kept her focus on her morning show.

One of the reasons why Oprah has reached the success she has is that she is so relatable. She may have mansions around the country, but she still shares many of our daily struggles. One of those struggles was very public, and that was her weight loss journey. Oprah is famous for her yoyo-ing weight and diets, but was never ashamed to share that piece of her life.

“In 1992 I reached my heaviest, 237 pounds. I was 38. Then, four years ago, I made it a goal to lose weight, and I appeared on the January 2005 cover [of O Magazine] at a toned 160 pounds. I thought I was finished with the weight battle. I was done. I’d conquered it. I was so sure, I was even cocky. I had the nerve to say to friends who were struggling, ‘All you have to do is work out harder and eat less! Get your 10,000 steps in! None of that starchy stuff!'” Oprah wrote in O Magazine in 2006. 

However, Oprah couldn’t maintain the weight loss and shared the struggle with her readers. “So here I stand, 40 pounds heavier than I was in 2006. (Yes, you’re adding correctly; that means the dreaded 2-0-0.) I’m mad at myself. I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I’m still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, ‘How did I let this happen again?'”

When Oprah and the Oprah Winfrey Show were on top of the world, she made a bold decision. She chose to walk away from it. In 2011, Oprah chose to end her hit show to focus on her own network, The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). However, her TV success didn’t immediately carry over to the network.

“I, in the beginning, made a lot of mistakes. I made the wrong choices. And I have to this day gone over and over in mind, ‘Should I have waited ’til I completely ended The Oprah Winfrey Show?’ Yes. That would be the answer, because I needed to be there,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter. “This whole idea that you can start something from scratch that carries your name and bears your brand…and not be there for daily input and expect other people to get that is…it’s just a false notion.”

And because Oprah is just so Oprah, she didn’t let the humble beginning get her down. She looked at the problem, determined to find a solution. “So now I know that…. The turnaround came when I had my own come-to-Jesus meeting with myself…. ‘Stop looking at this as a problem that you’ve created and look at it for the opportunity that it is,'” she shared she was thinking during that moment. “‘How many people in their lifetime get an opportunity to have a platform — call it whatever you will, a network — that has their name on it?'”

Oprah’s award-winning show was born and raised in Chicago, but eventually it was time to leave that city behind. In March 2015, Oprah closed up shop in Chicago and consolidated her business in Los Angeles. Her show was finished, and her cable network was being run in California, so it was time to make the move.

“The time had come to downsize this part of the business and to move forward,” Winfrey told The Hollywood Reporter. “It will be sad to say goodbye, but I look ahead with such a knowing that what the future holds is even more than I can see.”