How Oprah Winfrey Became Famous | SUCCESS STORY of American Media MOGUL | #Timeline

January 29, 1954, Oprah Winfrey is born. Born in Mississippi, Oprah Winfrey was reared by her grandmother on a farm where she began her broadcasting career by learning to read aloud and perform recitations at the age of 3. 1960, Oprah Winfrey moves to Milwaukee. From age 6 to 13, she lived in Milwaukee with her mother. After suffering abuse and molestation, she ran away and was sent to a juvenile detention home at the age of 13, only to be denied admission because all the beds were filled. 1963, Oprah Winfrey is raped at age 9. She claims she was raped at age 9 and repeatedly molested by her mother's cousin's boyfriend. At age 14, her mother sent her to live with her father in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon was strict but encouraging and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honor student and received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution where she studied communications. 1963, Oprah Winfrey becomes pregnant. She became pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy when she was 14. The death of her baby devastated her and she vowed to turn her life around. 1971, Oprah Winfrey wins the Miss Black Tennessee Beauty Pageant. At age 18, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee Beauty Pageant. She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station WVOL which hired her to do the news part-time. She worked there during her senior year of high school and again while in her first two years of college. August 14, 1978, People Are Talking is released. Working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to co-anchor the 6 o'clock news. She was also a co-host of WJZ's local talk show, People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. 1983, Oprah Winfrey moves to Chicago. In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, A.M. Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest-rated talk show in Chicago. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning on September 8, 1986. December 18, 1985, The Color Purple is released. In 1985, Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's epic film adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple. She earned immediate acclaim as Sophia, the distraught housewife. The following year, Winfrey was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but she lost to Angelica Houston. 1986, Oprah becomes a millionaire. Born in rural poverty and raised by a mother dependent on government welfare payments in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show received national syndication. Winfrey negotiated ownership rights to the television program and started her own production company. February 10, 1993, Oprah Winfrey interviews Michael Jackson. In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare primetime interview with Michael Jackson which became the fourth most watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever with an audience of 100 million people. 1995, Oprah becomes the richest African-American of the 20th century. At the age of 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African-American on the Forbes 400. With a net worth of $800 million in the year 2000, she is believed to have been the richest African-American of the 20th century. 1996, The Oprah Effect. The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed the Oprah Effect. The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse of book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book club selection, it instantly became a bestseller. 2002, The Oprah Magazine. Winfrey publishes the magazine O, The Oprah Magazine from 2004 to 2008, also published a magazine called O at Home. In 2002, Fortune called O, The Oprah Magazine, the most successful startup ever in the industry. 2004, Oprah becomes the world's only black billionaire. Forbes' list of the world's billionaires has listed Oprah as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in the world that was achieved in 2003. As of 2014, Winfrey had a net worth in excess of $2.9 billion and has overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America. February 26, 2007, Building a Dream, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy is released. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls South Africa is the girls-only boarding school that officially opened in January 2007 in South Africa. Inspired by her own humble beginnings and disadvantaged background, Oprah Winfrey stated that she founded the Leadership Academy to provide educational and leadership opportunities for academically gifted girls from impoverished backgrounds in South Africa who exhibited leadership qualities for making a difference in the world. On October 16, 2007, Winfrey revealed that she was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder that made her gain 20 pounds. January 15, 2008, Oprah Winfrey Network. On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called OWN, Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled to launch in 2009 but was delayed and actually launched on January 1, 2011. November 20, 2009, Oprah Winfrey announces the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show. In a live broadcast from Chicago, a tearful Oprah Winfrey said that she has decided, after much prayer and months of careful thought, that The Oprah Winfrey Show would finish when her contract with CBS runs out in 2011. Her show aired nationally for 25 seasons and it was one of the longest-running daytime television talk shows in history. The show received 47 Daytime Emmy Awards before Winfrey chose to stop submitting it for consideration and remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history. If you want to see the timeline I did on Elon Musk, check out the video right there next to me. I think you'll enjoy it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.