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Oprah: No wedding plans for now

Talk show host on 'Larry King Live'

Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey  


(CNN) -- She's one of the wealthiest women in the world. She created a talk-show powerhouse, established a motion picture acting career, and the merest mention of a book title from her can move hundreds of thousands of copies.

And yet, Oprah Winfrey says, all people want to know is when she and longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham are going to get married.

"America is obsessed with getting married," she said on Tuesday's "Larry King Live" on CNN. "(But) what America is obsessed with is not actually the marriage itself. ... They want a wedding, they want some doves to fly, they want a pretty Oscar de la Renta gown. ... They are not interested in my life, is it meaningful, or is there a real intimacy there."

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All right. Still, is she?

"For the past 15, 16 years the answer has been no," she told King. "I will say that our relationship has gotten, you know, increasingly better over the years in terms of bonding and supporting one another. ... But the whole issue of him wanting to define himself as not being Oprah Winfrey's boyfriend ... I thought it was very important to him, and very important to the relationship."

As for herself, she added, the idea of being wanted has been more important than actually getting married. Moreover, the freedom the two have maintained has been an "advantage" in the tabloid-crazed world in which they live, she said.

Talking about herself

Winfrey has been in the middle of that world since 1985, when "The Oprah Winfrey Show" debuted. The same year, she received rave reviews for her role in "The Color Purple." It had been a long road to success -- from Mississippi poverty to local TV news to talk show stardom -- and success wouldn't always be fun, especially when supermarket tabloids chart your every dietary and romantic move.

She used to be upset by the headlines, she said, but doesn't pay attention to them anymore.

She recalled reading a cover story on Steven Spielberg in Time while working on "The Color Purple" when Spielberg saw her. "He said, 'put that away,' " Winfrey said. "And I was like, 'put that away?' He goes, 'I never read that stuff' ... he doesn't read the good stuff so that he doesn't have to believe the bad.

"Now I completely understand," she continued. "It really took me a solid 10 years ... (but) I don't read it anymore."

She's also steered away from writing about herself. Winfrey was going to write a memoir a few years ago, but canceled it when she decided she wasn't ready.

"I had been convinced that I should do the book because I was turning 40. Well, turning 40 doesn't mean that all of a sudden you know more than you did when you were 39 or 38," Winfrey, 47, said. "At the time, (canceling the book) was the hardest decision I had ever made."

She's also agonized over whether she should continue to do the talk show, the foundation of her media empire, which includes "O: The Oprah Magazine" and Harpo Productions, a television and movie production company.

"I think of dropping it every contract," she said. "I really thought that I was going to drop it in 1998 ... and then I had my 'Beloved' experience and recognized that how dare I complain about being tired." Winfrey starred in the 1998 movie "Beloved," directed by Jonathan Demme.

Good works

"Beloved" received mixed reviews, but Winfrey again earned raves, as she did for "The Color Purple" and the 1989 TV movie "The Women of Brewster Place."

But, though she keeps a hand in motion picture production, she said she has little desire to act.

"What I really want to do the most is to use my life in whatever form to affect other people's lives for the good, and so if that's a film that I can produce ... then that's OK."

She has plans to put her fortune toward good works, as well. In particular, she said, she wants to use her money to educate young girls and women around the world.

Despite her fortune and fame, though, Winfrey said it's still possible for her to appear in public like a regular person.

"I walk to Marshall Fields to get, you know, the Clinique special. I go everywhere. I go to the grocery store," she said.

Perhaps she's allowed, she added, because her talk show has made her so approachable. To her fans, she said, she's must seem more like a confidant than a celebrity.

She recalled an experience from several years ago.

"I was in a restaurant in Los Angeles. Elizabeth Taylor was at one table, and I was at another," she said. "(And) people would come over to me and say, "Oprah! Guess who's here? Elizabeth Taylor!"







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