Oprah WinfreyA media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist
Winfrey is best known for multi-award-winning talk show "The Oprah Winfrey Show" which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and aired from 1986 to 2011.
In 1983, Winfrey went to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show "AM Chicago".
Within months, the show went from last place in the ratings the highest rated talk show in Chicago.
"AM Chicago" was renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show", expanded to a full hour and had been broadcast nationally starting September 8, 1986.
On average, approximately 40 million of Americans watched her show each week.
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Oprah was named:
The world's most powerful woman.
The most influential woman in the world.
The most influential black person of her generation.
The greatest woman in American history.
Oprah Gail Winfrey is born on January 29th, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi.
She was born to a teenage single mother and raised in a poor neighborhood.
Winfrey's family was so poor that she often wore dresses made of potato sacks.
She was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend starting when she was nine years old.
At 13, she ran away from home.
She became pregnant at the age of 14, but her son died shortly after birth
At 17 years old, she won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.ll
From her senior year, she worked for the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time.
South Africa
Winfrey travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS.
From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7,000,000.
Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg.
Philanthropy
In 2004, Winfrey became the first black person to rank among the 50 most generous Americans.
By 2012, she had given about $400 million to educational causes.
Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film.
Oprah's Angel Network
In 1998, Winfrey created the Oprah's Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world.
Oprah's Angel Network raised more than $80,000,000