After days of speculation as to what the huge Oprah family secret was, the media queen finally confessed the truth: she recently learned she has a half-sister she never knew about.
On today’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show” Winfrey revealed her half sister was a woman named Patricia, a single mother working two jobs and living in Milwakee.
Throughout the show, Patricia spoke of spending much of her childhood in foster care. She said she began looking for her birth mother when she was 20 — a search she soon abandoned and did not resume for many years.
But in 2007, the adoption agency Patricia had initially contacted responded to her with news that her birth mother did not want to meet her. On the same day, Patricia saw a local news story that featured an interview with Oprah’s mother, Vernita Lee, in which Lee disclosed details that corresponded with what little information Patricia knew of her birth family. Vernita Lee said,
“I made the decision to give her up because I wasn’t able to take care of her…When I left the hospital I told the nurse that I wasn’t going to keep the baby.”
Winfrey says the two met on Thanksgiving Day, and decided to share the discovery on Winfrey’s show because they did not want the information to be exploited.