Oprah Winfrey's 73rd Birthday Countdown

Oprah Winfrey Timeline

About Oprah Winfrey

From rural poverty to the most successful talk show in television history, Oprah built a media empire spanning 25 seasons of The Oprah Winfrey Show, a book club that moved millions of copies, and the OWN network.

The demotion that made her

Oprah was co-anchoring Nashville's evening news at 19, but in Baltimore the anchor desk didn't fit - WJZ-TV pulled her off the news and parked her on a morning show called People Are Talking. It turned out to be the luckiest demotion in television. In January 1984 she took over Chicago's last-place AM Chicago, and within a month it was the city's top talk show, overtaking Phil Donahue. Two years later it went national as The Oprah Winfrey Show.

You get a car! (276 times)

The Oprah Winfrey Show ran 25 seasons and 4,561 episodes before ending in 2011, the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history. On September 13, 2004, she opened a season by giving every audience member a Pontiac G6 - 276 cars in one afternoon, shouting 'You get a car!' twelve times. Her book club turned pick after pick into an instant bestseller, and in 2003 Forbes named her the first Black woman billionaire.

A promise kept to Mandela

After telling Nelson Mandela she wanted to build a school, Oprah spent $40 million creating the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a boarding school for gifted South African girls from disadvantaged backgrounds that opened in 2007. Its first class of 72 graduated in January 2012, every one bound for university. Her Angel Network raised more than $80 million for charities worldwide, and in 2013 President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Quick facts

• Born January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi
• The Oprah Winfrey Show ran 25 seasons and 4,561 episodes
• Took last-place AM Chicago to No. 1 within a month of arriving in 1984
• First Black woman to become a billionaire, per Forbes in 2003
• Gave away 276 Pontiac G6s in a single 2004 episode
• Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013

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