Oprah Winfrey’s bitter stepmother Barbara in explosive first-ever interview | Mail Online
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Negroes in the house! Negroes in the house!’ Oprah shouted as her father and his wife arrived. ‘She was reminding us of our low class,’ says Oprah’s bitter Stepmother in an explosive first-ever interview
- After 14 years of marriage to Oprah’s father Vernon, Barbara Winfrey is being forced out of her marital home by Oprah, leaving her homeless
- Barbara refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with Oprah
- ‘You say I never talk to you,’ Oprah told Barbara in a birthday phone call. ‘I’m talking to you now. You have until Monday to get out of MY house’
- When Oprah threw her Legends’ Ball, Vernon and Barbara weren’t on the main floor with the A-listers but tucked in a corner on the second floor. ‘We weren’t allowed to mingle with the celebrities,’ says Barbara
- ‘It wasn’t unusual for Oprah to fly to her house in Hawaii, call Gayle (King) and say, "Fire so and so and so and so." Oprah and Gayle’s relationship is "bizarre",’ says Barbara
- Oprah was never willing to take a DNA test to prove Vernon is her real dad. ‘She can’t believe such a silly man would make such a magnificent creature’
- ‘Oprah complained that my sheets didn’t have 1000 thread and the bath towels and coffee cups weren’t big enough,’ Barbara says
By Laura Collins In Nashville, Tennessee
Published: 07:44 EST, 22 April 2024 | Updated: 09:01 EST, 22 April 2024
This is the first of a two-part world exclusive interview with Barbara Winfrey, the ex-wife of Oprah’s father Vernon. In Part 2, to be published tomorrow, Mrs. Winfrey will reveal the shocking details of the big blowup between Oprah and her boyfriend Stedman Graham, the truth about her relationship with Gayle King and how she really feels about being in her own skin.
Barbara Winfrey can pinpoint exactly when her divorce turned more ugly than she had ever thought possible.
It was Friday 2 November 2024, her sixty-fourth birthday, and the day she received the telephone call that turned the implosion of her marriage into an 18-month legal battle with one of the most powerful celebrities on the planet – her stepdaughter, Oprah Winfrey.
Barbara listened as Oprah delivered her thunderous ultimatum: ‘You say I never talk to you?
I want to talk to you now. You have until Monday to get out of MY house.’
Earlier this month Barbara was finally served with an eviction notice. She has until 29 May to vacate the $1.4million house just south of Nashville that was home throughout her 14-year union to Oprah’s father, Vernon Winfrey.
Member of the wedding: Oprah didn’t exactly embrace Barbara Winfrey when she became part of the family. But she certainly made a show of it in front of the camera, as she was wont to do, says Barbara in a world exclusive interview. Barbara married Oprah’s father Vernon Winfrey in Nashville on June 17, 2000 and Oprah and Stedman Graham were front and center
Sad farewell: Barbara Winfrey has been evicted from the marital home in Franklin, Tennessee, she shared with Vernon for over a dozen years. When Oprah called Barbara on her birthday, Oprah told her ‘You have until Monday to get out of MY house’
Now, Barbara is breaking her silence and speaking publicly for the first time about her devastation at what she regards as Oprah’s callous and calculated betrayal.
In an emotional and wide-ranging interview Barbara has given her account of the dispute, reveals the part Oprah played in ‘destroying’ her marriage, and gives an excoriating insight into the woman behind the global brand.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline she said, ‘I have lost everything. It’s not just a house, this is my home. All my memories are here.
‘I’m trying to keep it together but there are some days I just don’t understand how I could have made her so angry that she would kick me out on the street and think nothing about it. But that’s Oprah – she’s judge and jury.’
Evicted: Barbara was first ordered by the court to vacate her home by March 31. Oprah purchased the house in the **** of her company, Overground Railroad LLC, the plaintiff in the case
A world away from the inspirational figure beloved by millions, the Oprah Barbara describes is manipulative and high-handed, treats family like staff and uses her wealth to control others.
She claims that Oprah, 60, and longterm partner Stedman Graham, 63, are not bound by romance but a pragmatic cocktail of shared secrets, convenience and money.
She describes Oprah’s relationship with close confidante Gayle King, 59, as ‘bizarre’ and ‘unhealthy,’ and points to it as the reason that neither woman is married.
And at the heart of it all, Barbara claims, the ‘real Oprah’ – hidden behind the image she projects so well – is a woman unhappy in her skin and, as Barbara has learned to her cost, unforgiving to those who inspire her wrath.
Barbara said, ‘You find out quickly where your place is with Oprah and you get in that place and you stay in that place.
‘My crime, I think, was to talk to her like a normal person and she didn’t like that one bit.’
Love-less: ‘Love & Blessings’ Oprah wrote on this photograph of her and Barbara taken at the superstar’s 50th birthday party in Chicago in 2024. But Oprah hasn’t shown her Stepmother much love in words or deed over the years
Barbara was Vice Principal at Brentwood High School, a respected public school in Nashville, when she first met Vernon Winfrey.
Winfrey’s barber shop in a rundown area of East Nashville was a local landmark – it has been there for more than 50 years – and his work as a local councilman made him a well-known figure in the community.
Barbara recalled: ‘I used to send difficult students to his shop to work there at weekends, sweep floors that sort of thing, help them stay out of trouble.’
Fifteen years after first meeting him, they reconnected and the passing acquaintance became something more.
They married on 17 June 2000 in a ceremony at Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel. Looking back, Barbara admitted, ‘I don’t think Oprah really wanted to be there but she couldn’t not be at such a big event. How would that look?’
Barbara and Oprah’s first meeting some weeks earlier at the star’s Indiana farm had not been easy.
Happy days: The red carpet wasn’t exactly rolled out for Barbara and Vernon when they were invited to Oprah’s Legends Ball. They were seat in a back corner of the second floor and were told not to mingle with the celebrities
Barbara said, ‘We drove from Nashville to Prairie, Indiana and when you pull up at her house it’s like pulling up to a castle. But that first night she didn’t have anything to say to us hardly at all. She wasn’t warm at all.’
The next morning Barbara got a taste of the sort of balance of power Oprah expected in their relationship.
She said, ‘Early the next morning she got on the intercom in her house – she has an intercom in all her houses – and she was calling, ”Barbara, Barbara come down, we’re going for a walk”.
‘Gayle was there and the way it worked she walked on one side, Oprah on the other and they peppered me with questions. I felt like I was being interrogated by the FBI. She had a large farm, about 125 acres. By the end of the walk I felt we’d covered the whole farm.’
Gayle did most of the talking that weekend. Oprah, according to Barbara, largely ignored her and her father – a pattern that would be repeated in visits and social occasions across the years.
Soon after their marriage, Vernon sold the house in which he had lived with his late wife and, thanks to Oprah, Barbara and Vernon got a place of their own.
Palatial: Despite the numerous rooms in Oprah’s Santa Barbara mansion, Barbara says she and Vernon were never asked to stay overnight
Barbara said, ‘It was a new home so we got to choose every part of it. We signed so many ********s, became part of the Housing Association. I was thankful of course. I never knew it was Oprah’s **** on the deeds and that I was just on probation.’
Instead with each paper signed the misunderstanding was compounded. Barbara had no idea that her home was a gift never truly given.
Yet over the years she has come to understand that this is the dynamic on which Oprah’s empire is built.
She explained, ‘My husband once told me that just because someone gives you something does not mean they love you. He was talking about Oprah.
‘Her brand is that she’s a nice, caring, generous, giving person. That’s not how it is. She’s controlling – it’s all about control.
‘She has confidentiality agreements with pretty much every**** in her life. She has them sign their life away and she has them in her pocket.
Cutting it: Vernon Winfrey has been a barber in East Nashville for half a century. He is a well-respected member of the community
‘Everything comes with stipulations but she doesn’t tell you that and she doesn’t tell you what they are.’