At this point, it’s fair to say Oprah Winfrey has enjoyed a long and very successful career. These days, she enjoys spending time with her partner Stedman Graham in their Montecito mansion. At the same time as Oprah’s enjoyed plenty of success, she’s had hair fair share of hardship over the years. In fact, the legendary television host revealed recently that she doesn’t actually have that many friends at all. So why is that? According to Oprah, there’s a simple explanation.
“So, I don’t have a lot of friends. Everybody knows Gayle [King]. There’s Gayle, there’s Maria, there’s Bob [Greene]. And that’s, that’s about it, you know? Gayle and Maria I met around the same time and I never really expanded that circle. Until recently, I’ve become friends with a couple of people in my later adult life, in the past five years,” she explained.
Now, having many friends isn’t that important, but having friends around you that really care is. When Oprah’s friend Gayle King divorced her husband in the 1990s, she went on to become what they describe as “the third-wheel” to Stedman and Oprah.
“I’m a proud third wheeler,” Gayle said. “I make no apologies for that. I got divorced back in 1994 and I’ve been their third wheel ever since. The good news is that Stedman is always very welcoming, so it never occurs to me when she says, ‘We’re going to so and so,’ I’m like, ‘When?’
“It doesn’t occur to me that I’m not invited,” she added. “But throughout the years, we’ve gone on some great trips together. And that’s not gonna change.”
Oprah has been together with her partner Stedman Graham for more than 30 years. She met the business executive and author at a charity function in 1986, and the pair went public with their relationship shortly after.
He even called into The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1987 to surprise her, asking his girlfriend: “I don’t know if you recognize my voice or not?”
In 1992, Graham proposed to Oprah in her home in Indiana.
“I want you to marry me,” he told her, according to People. “I think it’s time.”
