by Kitty Kelley
Oprah’s audience chastised her for guest-starring in the coming-out episode and then criticized Ellen for being a lesbian and making it public. Yet that night, when the “Ellen” character came out of the closet, she packed America’s living rooms with thirty-six million viewers, and Oprah’s show earlier that day, featuring Ellen and her then-girlfriend Anne Heche, also won high ratings. But Oprah’s cameo appearance, plus the blind item, burned up the Internet for weeks with rumors about her sexuality, the most outlandish being that she was going to come out in Newsweek the way Ellen came out in Time. Oprah finally issued an official statement denying that she was a lesbian, thereby making her sexual orientation a public issue for years to come. Before her public denial she had denied the lesbian rumors to her audience after taping a show with Rosie O’Donnell, and she again addressed the subject in a keynote speech to a convention of seven thousand broadcasting executives in Chicago. Her words appeared under coy headlines around the country:
“Oprah Denies Rampant Gay Rumor” (Variety)
“Rumblings Behind the Oprah Rumor” (New York Post)
“Oprah Says She’s Playing It Straight” (Intelligencer Journal)
The week before that speech, her ratings had slipped 9 percent. “Since my appearance on the ‘Ellen’ show, there have been rumors circulating that I’m gay,” Oprah said in her press release. “I’ve addressed this on my show, but the rumor mill still churns. Several weeks ago, syndicated columnist Liz Smith wrote that ‘one of the biggest and longest-running TV stars is contemplating coming out….’ Apparently, people assume that it’s me. It’s not.
“As I’ve said, I appeared on the Ellen show because I wanted to support her in her desire to free herself—and I thought it was a really good script. I am not in the closet. I am not coming out of the closet. I am not gay.”
Unintentionally or not, Oprah issued her statement during Gay Pride Week, which Barney’s downtown store in New York City celebrated with a window showing mannequins of Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche popping out of a volcano. The Ellen mannequin is reading a copy of the New York Post’s front page reporting that the Walt Disney Company, which owned ABC, was getting bashed by Baptists over its “gay-friendly” policies. Flying above the whole scene is Oprah Winfrey in an airplane trailing a banner that reads, “I Am Not Gay.” In certain gay circles those words became as infamous as Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”
Years later Rosie O’Donnell, who had come out as a lesbian, speculated on Oprah’s relationship with her best friend: “I don’t know that she and Gayle are necessarily doing each other, but I think they are the emotional equivalent of [a gay couple]….When they did that road trip together [“Oprah and Gayle’s Big Adventure,” featured in five episodes on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006], that’s as gay as it gets, and I don’t mean it to be an insult, either. I’m just saying, listen, if you ask me, that’s a [gay] couple.”
Twelve years later, when Ellen DeGeneres married Portia de Rossi, Oprah presented their wedding video on what The New York Times called “the secular chapel” of her daytime talk show. She chose to make her pro-gay statement and celebrate Ellen’s lesbian union less than a week after voters in Maine, like those in thirty other states, rejected same-sex marriage.
When Liz Smith was asked about the reaction to her blind item, she said, “I am sorry Oprah got what she considered grief because of this.” Years later the columnist said that Mary Tyler Moore had phoned her the day the item ran and joked, “ ‘Liz, I’m not coming out.’ So it has always amazed me that Oprah chose to assume I was talking about her [when I wrote that one of the biggest and longest-running TV stars is coming out]….I came to sincerely regret this stupid blind item, and I have never done another one. [But] as a result, Oprah called a press conference to say she was not gay and would not be coming out. I hadn’t even been thinking of her when I wrote it. But I always felt it created some hard feelings, which I had not intended. So this knee-jerk reaction [of hers] was peculiar, I felt. She should have just ignored it. But it caused enormous speculation, and maybe that’s the kind of thing that keeps her front and center. She always seems to grasp the nettle.”
The suggestion that Oprah purposely teased rumors about her sexuality seemed plausible in light of certain comments she made in interviews, in speeches, and on her show. Two months before appearing on Ellen’s coming-out show, Oprah hosted a Valentine’s Day segment entitled “Girlfriends” in which she mentioned the affectionate nicknames she and her best friend, Gayle King, called each other. Oprah was “Negro”; Gayle was “Blackie.” Oprah joked on the air about rumors that Gayle was the reason Oprah avoided marrying Stedman, and Gayle joked that Oprah was the reason she got divorced. Their jokes led to lurid cover stories in the tabloids:
“Oprah & Gayle Move In Together” (Globe)
“Oprah’s Secret Life: The Truth About Those Gay Rumors” (National Enquirer)
“Oprah & Gayle Like Lovers” (Globe)
“Who’s Gay & Who’s Not in Hollywood” (National Examiner)
It was not just the grocery store press that speculated on Oprah’s sexuality, but also the mainstream media. Writing about her power as America’s “talker-in-chief,” the National Review said, “she may or may not be lesbian.” In an essay about “the strange genius of Oprah,” The New Republic proffered its analysis: “Though she claims to have been romantically involved for years with a man named Stedman Graham…the two have never married. Naturally, gossip has circulated for years that the relationship is a sham and that Oprah is actually gay. Provocatively enough, Oprah rarely refers to Graham on her show. Instead, her most frequent references are to Gayle King….So, rather than refute rumors that she is homosexual, she seems to subtly encourage them….Her detractors cry hypocrite. But there is nothing hypocritical about having a private life. If Oprah is in a fake romance, and if she is gay, neither reality would contradict her public advocacy of courage, fortitude and growth through suffering.”
People wrote about Oprah and Gayle as if they were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, although they did not live together, and they categorically denied they were lovers. There was no foundation for the rumors of a lesbian relationship, except for their constant togetherness and Oprah’s bizarre teasing of the subject.
“My gaydar first went up when I covered an event at Radio City Music Hall [April 14, 2000] and watched Oprah and Gayle walk the red carpet with their pinkie fingers linked and Stedman trailing behind them,” said a prominent gossip columnist for the New York Daily News. “Then came the huge, no-expense-spared launch of O magazine a couple nights later when Oprah installed Gayle as Editor-at-Large. If you get the text of Oprah’s remarks, you’ll see that she sounded like the husband who gives his trophy wife everything….It was all in jest but…”
Onstage at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion the night of April 17, 2000, Oprah introduced Gayle to a teeming crowd of alpha females (Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Martha Stewart, Rosie O’Donnell, Maria Shriver, Diana Ross, Tina Turner), saying, “I’m known to be a good gift-giver. You’ve read rumors. It’s true….Over the years I’ve given Gayle a lot of great gifts.” She then regaled the crowd in a Southern singsong voice. “I gave Gayle her nanny when she had her first chile, and then her second chile; we got extra hailp. I built the swimmin’ pool for the children.” The audience roared. “Paid for the children’s private schools. Bought her a BMW for da birthday.” The audience laughed as Oprah catalogued her largesse and her friend’s indebtedness. Adopting a meek little voice to imitate Gayle, she continued, “Oh, I just don’t know, I don’t know what I can ever do to repay you. The children, we can never repay you. There’s nothing we can do to repay you.” The punch line came after Gayle quit her job in Hartford, started commuting to the Hearst offices in New York to help launch Oprah’s magazine, and began working so hard that she finally said, “Bitch, I don’t owe you nothing!” The audience screamed with laughter.
While Oprah had a live-in male partn
er, she seemed to spend more time with Gayle, and she talked about her best girlfriend at every turn, providing for her and her children in a way few men ever could. Oprah moved Gayle to New York City to take over O magazine, bought her a $7.5 million apartment in Manhattan in addition to her $3.6 million house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and traveled the world with her, sometimes with Stedman in tow, sometimes not.
Part of Oprah’s strong fan base was in black churches, where traditional marriage between a man and a woman is honored. As one of their own, Oprah was a shining example to the world of African American achievement, and few would ever publicly criticize her, but there were murmurs among some black ministers that, despite her grand success, Oprah was not the best role model for young African American girls. For whatever reason, she was not prepared to make the commitment to marriage: “I can choose not to be married, if I want,” she said, opting for the comfort and acceptance of being a couple in a coupled society. Yet her living situation with Stedman, her close friendship with Gayle, and her departure from the church in which she was raised made some in the black community wonder about her sexual moorings. While Oprah denied being a lesbian, she seemed to deliberately provoke discussion of her sexuality by issuing bizarre denials to questions no one asked, as if she wanted to stir publicity.
This became particularly noticeable in 2006, when O, The Oprah Magazine, devoted an issue to friendship and featured a Q&A titled “Oprah and Gayle Uncensored,” which kicked off another furor of gay rumors:
Q: Well, let’s get right to it! Every time I tell somebody, “I’m interviewing Oprah and Gayle,” the response is always the same: “Oh [long pause] are they…you know…together?”
OPRAH: You’re kidding. People are still saying that?
Q: Every single person…
OPRAH: I understand why people think we’re gay. There isn’t a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women. So I get why people have to label it—how can you be this close without it being sexual? How else can you explain a level of intimacy where someone always loves you, always respects you, admires you?
GAYLE: Wants the best for you.
OPRAH: Wants the best for you in every single situation of your life.
GAYLE: The truth is, if we were gay, we would so tell you, because there’s nothing wrong with being gay.
OPRAH: Yeah. But for people to still be asking the question when I’ve said it and said it and said it, that means they think I’m a liar. And that bothers me….I’ve told nearly everything there is to tell.
It was the nearly in Oprah’s response that jumped out, drawing media attention and giving comedians a field day. In his nightly monologue, David Letterman mentioned that Oprah had denied she was gay. “I hear that and I go hmmmmm….” At the American Museum of the Moving Image tribute to Will Smith, Jamie Foxx said, “I was talking about you the other day. I was lying in bed with Oprah, and I turn over to Gayle and I say, ‘You know what?’ ” When Kathy Griffin went on Larry King Live, he asked, “Do you think we’re ready for a gay president?” She said, “I’d love it. By that, I assume you mean Oprah. I tease, Larry. I know we’re scared of her. Oprah, first lesbian president. Gayle, lesbian vice president. Just a thought. I’m not outing anybody.”
The rumors that dogged Oprah probably said more about society’s need to define people sexually and the discomfort many feel about those who do not fit a prescribed definition of heterosexual or homosexual. The category of bisexual is too fraught for most people, although Oprah introduced the subject with a show on “sexual fluidity,” showing women past the age of forty who left their men for other women without necessarily defining themselves as lesbians. She said she understood the resistance to such labeling. After interviewing the evangelist Ted Haggard about the gay sex scandal that forced him to resign as pastor of the New Life Church, she told her audience, “I got [i.e., understood] him as not wanting to be labeled—not wanting to be put in a box.” Throughout the Haggard interview, though, she made a point of saying she did not agree with him that sexuality is complex and complicated. “I am heterosexual,” she stated. “I don’t know what it would be like to have that inclination [to the same sex], but I have many friends who are gay.” Even admitting to having homosexual friends was a big step forward for the young woman who once thought homosexuality was a sin and who told her brother, who died of AIDS, that he would not go to Heaven because he was gay. Still, Oprah was so sensitive to the lesbian rumors surrounding her that she would not allow two women in her employ at Harpo to publicly declare their relationship, although they had been living together for several years. In other words, she seemed to say: It’s okay to be gay, as long as I’m not tainted by it.
Perhaps Oprah’s enthusiasm for her female friends was misinterpreted by those who made assumptions because they were looking through a prism of lesbian rumors and gave her comments far more weight than she intended. For instance, shortly after Liz Smith’s blind item and Oprah’s cameo as the therapist who gently urged Ellen to come out, Oprah and her camera crew went on tour with Tina Turner in 1997, to Houston, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. “We followed her around the country because I wanted to be Tina,” Oprah said. Instead, she became Tina’s most famous groupie. Besotted with the rocker’s personal story of survival, Oprah wore a blond-frosted Tina Turner wig, performed with her onstage, and gushed about her on the air the way she used to burble about Stedman when they first started dating. “Tina is our goddess of rock ’n’ roll….She is just the hottest….I feel about Tina how men feel about football,” Oprah said, giving rise to a rash of comments about a “girl crush.” She told Vibe magazine that the most fun she has is “when me and Stedman and the dogs are in the Bentley and the top’s down. And I’m wearing my Tina Turner wig, holding on to make sure it doesn’t come off. That is a cool thing—the whole idea of it.” Stedman finally told her to lose the wig. “Nobody’s telling you that you are not Tina Turner, so I have to be the one to tell you. Take the wig off and stop pretending that you are Tina Turner.” Oprah gave the wig to a cousin.
Shortly after the tour, Oprah sat down with Jamie Foster Brown of Sister 2 Sister, a black entertainment magazine. The article was titled “Everything Negroes Ever Wanted to Ask Oprah.” During the interview Stedman telephoned, and Brown reported Oprah’s side of the conversation: “Now Oprah starts talking about the Liz Smith column that said a prominent [television] person who is an icon is gay. Oprah had sent out a press release saying she wasn’t gay,” Brown wrote, before quoting what Oprah said to Stedman:
“No. Right. Okay, honey. So you’re gonna tell them no? Whatever. I already sent out a press statement. Just say, ‘I think she said it all.’ Why can’t you say that? You can say, ‘I’m sick of this. We’re so sick of this gay stuff.’ Why does everybody want to think you’re gay? Okay. Bye.”
“So Oprah,” asked Jamie Foster Brown. “Are you gay?”
Oprah laughed. “I think if you’re gay, that’s fine; it’s your business and it’s fine. But what offends me about anybody implying that I’m gay or Stedman is gay is this: that means that everything I’ve done or said is a sham….It means it’s a lie. The whole thing’s a lie. It would mean that everything you’ve ever done or said, the whole thing is one great, big, faked-up lie.”
Despite such denials, speculation persisted over Oprah’s sexual preferences. She continued living with Stedman, but they maintained separate lives, which they said was necessary because of their careers. They came together for occasional weekends, holidays, and vacations. “This is what our life is like,” Oprah explained to one writer. “I call it two ships passing.” She made a loud tooting noise. “We just check at the beginning of the week:
“ ‘Where are you gonna be?’ I say. ‘Okay, I’m going to Maya’s this weekend.’
“[He says:] ‘Well, I’m gonna be in Colorado Springs.’
“ ‘When do you think you’ll be home? Sunday? Okay. Could you take an early plane and get here Sunday afternoon? Maybe w
e can have dinner together.’ That’s what our life is like.
“ ‘Where are you gonna be?’ ‘I’m gonna be gone for the summer….I’ll try to get a house on the weekends so you can come up…and see me and the dogs.’ ”
To some, Stedman looked like Oprah’s cover story—the presentable male partner she needed to be accepted by heterosexual society, nothing more than camouflage. Her close friends argued otherwise, saying he was the grounding force of her life. Others did not care one way or the other. “I would not be surprised if Oprah is gay,” said her friend Erica Jong. “If she is, she is. It certainly fits. Stedman is probably gay or neutral, but they have a bond because of where they come from. Her being gay would be the right reaction to the sexual abuse she says she’s suffered and the mistrust she’s always had of men. Remember, many people don’t want to be outed, and I don’t think everyone needs to declare themselves publicly. Besides, people, mostly women, can slide easily from one sexual preference to the other. If Oprah is gay, I can understand that she does not want that fact known in a society that is homophobic and might judge her negatively. As a businesswoman, to declare herself publicly as a lesbian might be detrimental.”
During their interview Jamie Foster Brown asked Oprah, “How important is sex?”
Oprah said, “It’s a natural part of the process. I mean I’m not one of those women who feels like I gotta have it all the time….I wouldn’t consider myself a very sexual being.”
Some who knew Oprah well during her Baltimore years agreed with her assessment, speculating that her tormented four-year love affair with Tim Watts, who was married at the time, plus seriously involved with another woman when he was seeing Oprah, had so blindsided her that she was wrung out, emotionally and sexually, and never able to make herself vulnerable to any man again. Instead, she poured all her sexual energies into her career. Her conflict over submission and control found its resolution in her work, and soon the investment of time and energy in herself became its own reward, and her own survival.