Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, Oprah Winfrey spent her first six years with her grandmother then moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother. Having suffered abuse in her mother’s home, she ran away at the age of 13 and later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to live with her father. Her father instilled in her a love of reading and learning. At Tennessee radio stations she got her first experience in broadcasting. After graduating from Tennessee State University, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, where she hosted her first radio talk show in 1978. She moved to Chicago in 1984, where she turned a failing television talk show, AM Chicago, into one of the city’s most popular programs. In 1985 the program was named The Oprah Winfrey Show. The show went national in 1986 and later won numerous awards. After her performance in the 1985 film The Color Purple, Winfrey established a production company called HARPO Productions. In 1988 she purchased her talk show outright from ABC. Winfrey’s shrewd business deals made her the third woman (after Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball) to own a major studio. By the late 1990s she was well on her way to becoming the first African American billionaire in the United States.
