The talk show
host is planning
a big TV bash.
Oprah Winfrey turns 50 Thursday.
And the most powerful woman in television is throwing herself a big birthday party that starts on her daytime talk show – and will continue through the weekend.
She wants to make “everybody jealous and wish they were 50.”
Don’t bet against her accomplishing her goal.
After 20 years atop the daytime TV mountain, she didn’t get her $1.1 billion media empire by sitting quietly.
“What I know for sure, as I crest this major milestone: My life is bigger than I can ever know or imagine,” Winfrey writes in her magazine, O. “Finally, I feel grown – more like myself than I’ve ever been.”
Exactly how she’ll mark the birthday on TV remains a secret. The show will be taped in Chicago Thursday morning.
But it’s expected there’ll be a cadre of big-name stars – Is that you, Tom? Over here, Julia! – turning out in Winfrey’s studio to sing her praises.
That will be followed by a birthday bash over the weekend at her $50 million California ranch – which has Halle Berry, Maria Shriver and other big names on the guest list.
The stars just shine on Oprah. No wonder. An appearance on her show can get people to see a movie, read a book or buy makeup.
She has amassed more power than any other single person in television – but like a talk-show superhero, uses her powers mostly for good.
Her most distinctive triumph is her Book Club – which quickly catapulted her selections to the top of the best-seller list.
When she stopped the Book Club, the publishing world panicked.
A year later, she restarted the club – because of her own reawakened interest, she says, not a desire to meet any perceived demand – and her selections were greeted just as enthusiastically as before.
But the Book Club is just one element of the public’s long relationship with Oprah Winfrey.
After all, viewers see her five times a week – not counting the “after show” program that runs on Oxygen, the cable network she helped develop.
They’ve been on diets together, lost and gained pounds and self-respect together, and watched her fight a lawsuit from Texas cattle interests who blamed her dieting for a decline in beef consumption.
She got as large as 237 pounds, then trimmed down enough to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington. She fell off the food wagon and jumped back on the thin side in front of all.
Who can forget the day she pushed out a wheelbarrow with 60 pounds of gelatin to dramatize her weight loss and modeled a pair of jeans she hadn’t fit into in years. Fans followed her relationship with longtime love Stedman Graham, from dating to engagement to happily unmarried status.
They have never married and have no kids, but that hasn’t stopped her from becoming a national advocate for children, testifying before Congress to help push the National Child Protection Act. Her nonprofit Angel Network has raised millions to help the needy.
And Winfrey is nowhere near to giving up the daytime TV show. In fact, she’s signed through the 2007-2008 season.
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose,” she says. “I want to be thoroughly used when I die. Life is no brief candle for me. It’s kind of a splendid torch.”
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(c) 2004, New York Daily News.
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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Oprah Winfrey
AP-NY-01-28-04 0753EST
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