Oprah Winfrey turns 68 today, and what a ride it has been, not just for her, but for everyone who has come in contact with her, from the celebrity to the show’s audience.
From being born in poverty to single teenage mother, to facing abuse, to finally landing a job on the radio while still in school, Winfrey is an inspiration to many. And to celebrate her trip around the sun, let’s talk about the most iconic moments in her show, ever.
Oprah Yells: ‘You Get A Car!’
This was TV’s most exciting moment, ever. When Winfrey started pointing at her audience, saying “you get a car, you get a car, you get a car… everybody gets a car!”
The car in question was a Pontiac G6, retailing at just under $30,000 at the time. They ended up giving $7 million in cars, and Gayle King, Oprah’s longtime bestie spoke to People Magazine, saying, “She wanted to make sure that every car had a bow and not just a regular bow — it had to be an oversized jumbo red bow. I remember her looking at different shades of red to make sure it was the right shade of red. It was a whole big thing.”
She also recalled how Oprah decided to dress up in red as well, to match the look because she wanted it to be perfect.
The audience, of course, went wild and the moment, of Oprah raising both her hands to point at the audience, leaning a little back, dizzy with excitement herself has forever been immortalized into hundreds of memes.
Oprah was beside herself with joy, as she went on to say in the episode, “That was one of the happiest days of my life. It delights me, it makes me so happy, to see other people be happy and to be able to do that. That’s one of the great joys of my life.”
And this Oprah, celebrating Gayle King’s birthday, just a month ago.
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When Tom Cruise Jumped Up On Oprah’s Couch
The Tom Cruise Katie Holmes romance may have ultimately gone down the drain rather acrimoniously, but when the going was good, Cruise was high on happiness.
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Enough to jump up on Oprah’s couch, which she observed, laughing as he hollered about being in love. It was just one of those moments where Cruise let the world see him as a man in love, rather than a celebrity. Of course, the audience was even more delighted when he dragged Katie Holmes out, as she made a shy and blushing appearance on the floor.
The Visit To Forsyth County, Georgia
Oprah has never been one to shy away from racism, in all its ugly outpourings. In 1987, when “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was barely five years in the making, she visited Forsyth County, Georgia. No Black person had lived there in 75 years and Winfrey spoke with the junta over there, wondering why this was so and even worse, why they wanted to keep it that way.
Here’s Oprah, celebrating Maya Angelou.
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Oprah’s Biggest Regret: The Wagon Of Fat
Just a year later, came what Oprah later described the “biggest ego trips of her life”. In one of the highest-rated episodes of her show, Oprah wheeled out a wagon filled with 67 pounds of animal fat on the stage, because she started a diet, losing 67 pounds of weight.
She called the move, a “big, big, big, big, big, big, big mistake!” later, proving that even legendary talk show hosts can err, like humans, sometimes.
So here’s wishing Oprah Winfrey a happy birthday. That said, seeing this post, we doubt she’s having a birthday cake. Something Dwayne Johnson regrets.
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