Oprah recalls how one conversation about ownership changed the course of her career

Oprah reflected on the executive who called her arrogant for dreaming and the faith that proved him wrong.

Long before she was the Oprah Winfrey, the household name, legendary journalist and multimedia mogul, she was Oprah, a girl with big dreams from Mississippi. During a recent conversation with Keke Palmer on “Baby It’s Keke Palmer,” Winfrey reflected on the moments in her life that led her to where she is today. 

“Part of the reason I am who I am is because I was watching the ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show.’ And at the end of the ‘Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ there’s a little MTM and a little cat that comes out and goes ‘meow.’ And it was her own production company, MTM,” she recalled. “It was the first time that I realized, ‘Oh, you could own yourself. You could own your product. You could own what you’re putting out into the world.’ And MTM is what gave me the vision to believe that it could happen.” 

While many people describe her as a media mogul today, there was once a time when she was scrutinized for even being bold enough to dream of being a mogul. 

“I remember when I started in Chicago, I said to one of the suits, ‘One of the things I want is to one day become a mogul.’ And the next day, he was like, ‘How dare you use that language? How dare you say that?’ Yes. That’s what he said to me in 1983. ‘How dare you?’ He said it was so arrogant. And I was, like, so full of myself to think that I could become a mogul,” she recalled. 

Fast forward a few years, and she would go on to own the show that catapulted her career, the show that many executives had little faith in. However, it took her sacrificing a contract worth of vacation time to go film “The Color Purple,” which ultimately earned her an Oscar nomination. 

“Owning that show was the transition into me owning myself in so many ways. And that came about because…When I went away to do ‘The Color Purple,’ my bosses at the time said, ‘You know, you only have two weeks vacation,’ and I needed two months.” And I ended up giving all of my vacation for the entire contract. I said, ‘This is in 1985, if you just let me finish this movie, I’ll give up all of my vacation,’ she recalled. “And then when it came time to renew that contract, my lawyer said, ‘You never want to be in a position where you have to give up everything in order to sacrifice to do what you really want to do. What if you owned part of the show?’ And I said sure because I believed in myself, and that is the reason why I am where I am, because I believed that ownership was the way for me.”

That belief, that faith, Winfrey says, is what has led to her success. From when she was little girl running around the barbershop with her father, Winfrey declared that she would be a millionaire. Fast forward to today, and she is a billionaire, a title she couldn’t even proclaim as a child because she didn’t know it existed. Recalling a conversation with her late father in July 2022, the media mogul recalls members in her community saying, “Oprah always said she was going to become a millionaire. I didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she did it,” as she reached new heights. And just as they didn’t know how she would do it, she didn’t exactly know how she would either. 

“I have always had a belief that my life was bigger than I could even imagine because I was like I belong to something bigger than myself, which is the higher power of God. So I actually do believe and did believe that through Christ, you can do all things,” she shared. “So all the things that people thought a Black woman should be or should do, it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do what I’ve done. It didn’t. It never occurred to me. It just never occurred to me because I always saw myself as a little Black girl who was truly God’s child. So, when I walked into the newsroom and I was the only Black woman there, I just assumed I was supposed to be there because God had made the way for that. It never occurred to me to feel like I didn’t belong because I knew God had created the path for me to be there.” 

“Every decision that has brought you success, me success, and anybody else who’s listening has come from that space of something that’s bigger than you, that has a dream for you…that has a design for you that’s waiting for you to find the flow for yourself,” she concluded. “And the way to the flow is the truth.”