She’s now a 60-year-old megastar who is worth $2.9 billion, but back in 1983 Oprah was just a young TV personality who wanted to take the next step in her career.
After hearing that a Chicago-based morning show needed a new host, Oprah stayed up all night with an editor and put together an audition tape.
And now, more than 30-years later, the tape has been found:
Oprah got the gig and within a few months AM Chicago trumped Phil Donahue’s show to become the highest rating talk show in Chicago.
In 1986 it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and was broadcast nationally, again shooting to the top of the ratings.
More so than the content, it was Oprah’s relaxed style that proved to be a real hit with US viewers.
“In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk,” TIME magazine wrote at the time.
“As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue … What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plain-spoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy.”
“Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah’s eye … They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group-therapy session.”
The show ran for an incredible 25 years, wrapping up in 2011.