Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham have quietly spent four decades together – and now the famously private couple has resurfaced in a rare photo after nearly seven years out of the spotlight.
Oprah Winfrey, 72, was recently spotted alongside Stedman Graham, 75, in Chicago, offering a rare new glimpse of the man who has quietly remained by her side since the same year her legendary talk show launched.
The pair first met at a charity event in 1986 and developed a friendship before they started dating later that year. Six years later, Graham proposed, and for a time, it appeared Oprah was headed toward marriage.
The wedding, however, never happened.
‘I didn’t actually want a marriage’
In 1993, only one year after their engagement, the 72-year-old billionaire and her partner called off their engagement, but rather than ending their relationship, they decided to maintain a “spiritual relationship.”
Years later, the talk show icon admitted that she had wanted something very different from Graham’s proposal than she initially realized.
“I realized I didn’t actually want a marriage. I wanted to be asked,” she revealed in a 2020 essay for O, The Oprah Magazine.
“I wanted to know he felt I was worthy of being his missus, but I didn’t want the sacrifices, the compromises, the day-in-day-out commitment required to make a marriage work,” she added. “My life with the show was my priority, and we both knew it.”
‘We would not stay married’
When she wrote that column, the couple had already spent more than three decades proving that marriage wasn’t necessary for their relationship to last.
In fact, Oprah believes marrying Graham could have produced the opposite result.
“Both he and I now say, ‘If we had married, we would not be together,’” she told People in 2019.
In the interview, she explained that he’s “letting me be who I need to be in the world.
“He’s never demanding anything from me like, ‘Where’s my breakfast? Where’s my dinner?’ Never any of that, which I believed would have changed had we married,” she said.
“No question about it – we would not stay married, because of what that would have meant to him, and I would have had my own ideas about it,” she added.
Why Oprah never had children
Marriage wasn’t the only traditional path Oprah decided against during the life she built with Graham.
The media mogul also chose not to have children, telling People that years of interviewing people about their lives helped her understand “the depth of responsibility and sacrifice that is actually required to be a mother.”
“I realized, ‘Whoa, I’m talking to a lot of messed-up people, and they are messed up because they had mothers and fathers who were not aware of how serious that job is,’” she said.
“I don’t have the ability to compartmentalize the way I see other women do. It is why, throughout my years, I have had the highest regard for women who choose to be at home [with] their kids, because I don’t know how you do that all day long. Nobody gives women the credit they deserve,” The Colour Purple star admitted.
Through it all, Graham remained a constant presence in Oprah’s life, but increasingly one the public rarely saw at her side.
In fact, their last major public appearance together was at the Tyler Perry Studios Grand Opening Gala in October 2019, People reports.
Nearly seven years later, there was finally another.
Rare appearance
The occasion that brought Oprah and Graham back in front of the cameras was a 15-year reunion for the team behind The Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago.
Held at Reunion by Chef Art Smith on Navy Pier, the mid-August gathering reunited Oprah with former coworkers just weeks before the nationally syndicated talk show celebrates 40 years since its Sept. 8 launch.
Former senior supervising producer Jill Van Lokeren shared photos from the celebration, including Oprah and Graham posing alongside the chef with a large platter of fried chicken.
“15-year reunion for The Oprah Winfrey Show. The best segment 1 surprise guest showed up. A night of all love and pure joy. Forever grateful,” wrote Van Lokeren, who now works for the Obama Foundation.
Oprah also reflected on the milestone in her own social media post from the gathering.
“I cannot even believe that as of next month, September 8, it will be 40 years since we first launched The Oprah Winfrey Show. Thank you for being the greatest team ever,” she said in the clip.
What do you think about Oprah and Graham choosing to keep their nearly 40-year relationship so private, especially when so many celebrity couples live their romances in the spotlight? Do you think staying out of the public eye has helped them last? Please let us know your thoughts!