Oprah Gail Winfrey (baptised “Orpah Gail Winfrey) was born on January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to an unmarried teenage mother who surviving on welfare. At age 14, Oprah ran away from home and went to live with her biological father Vernon Winfrey who encouraged her education. At age 17, she won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, and was hired to read the news at WVOL radio during her senior year in high school. She excelled in academics and won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University where she studied communication. The rest is history.
Following a long series of television media successes, including The Oprah Winfrey Show she made the Forbes’ list of The World’s Billionaires in 2014, where her estimated a net worth was claimed to be in excess of 2.9 billion dollars, making her the richest self-made woman in America. Oprah’s life became the quintessential rags-to-riches story.
Oprah famously observed, “Education is the key to unlocking the world, a passport to freedom.”
