Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [101]
“She is the mother of us all,” Oprah said in 1986 when she introduced the hard-charging executive producer to her national audience. “I owe everything to her.”
DiMaio smiled and nodded in agreement. “Everything,” she said, knowing that DiMaio’s audition tape had landed Oprah the job in Chicago that led to her national syndication. “I feel very destined to have met her,” DiMaio said later. “I have pretty much unconditional love for her.”
DiMaio was the one to whom Oprah confided her fears of being assassinated. It was also DiMaio who received her late-night calls to go to Wendy’s for sour cream potatoes, and even if she got the call at midnight, DiMaio would throw on a coat, hail a cab waving a twenty-dollar bill, and rush to get to her boss for a late-night binge. The two young women developed a symbiotic relationship that enabled each to complement the other. DiMaio, tough and controlled, was unafraid of confrontation. Oprah, more emotionally needy, wanted to please everyone and be liked. Together they made a perfect pair. In later years the staff would accuse Oprah of playing good cop to Debra’s bad cop, a characterization Oprah did not like. But she could not deny that she allowed DiMaio to do all her dirty work (hiring, firing, correcting, criticizing) so she could reign as the beloved monarch. From the recollections of former employees, most of whom were terrified of DiMaio, Debra flew like an F22 fighter jet and treated everyone else as if they were Sop-with Camels. The daughter of a Marine colonel, DiMaio took charge and tolerated little nonsense from anyone, including, on occasion, Oprah. If the talk show host acted less than engaged on the air, Debra would break for a commercial and kick her into shape. During one show she told Oprah to stop showing her boredom. “You’re an Oscar-nominated actress,” she said. “Go out there and act like a talk show host.” They never really clashed because they were both driven by ratings and the desire to dethrone Phil Donahue.
In the early days Oprah referred to her small staff—six women and one man—as “my girls.” She sounded like the actress Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, who described her starry-eyed pupils as “my gels.” Oprah said of her staff: “These are my closest personal friends.”
“We’re each other’s family,” said associate producer Bill Rizzo, who frequently urged reporters to be kind to Oprah in their stories.
“We’ll be out to dinner and will vow that by this time next month we’ll be back with men,” said Christine Tardio. “Then the next month rolls around and we’re still together.”
“We all band together like a family since we don’t have anyone else,” said Ellen Rakieten. “I talk to Oprah every night on the phone. She says I’m her soul mate.”
All single and in their twenties, the “girls” worked fourteen-hour days, ate all their meals together, shopped together, and spent weekends together. They all worshipped Oprah. “I’d take a bullet for her,” said Mary Kay Clinton.
“The hardest part of my job, in addition to the terribly long hours, is the reading I have to be continually doing,” said Dianne Hudson, the only African American on staff then. “We all read the tabs, like The Star, the Globe, and the Enquirer.”
Alice McGee, who started as an intern at WLS and became a publicist for Harpo and later a producer, worried about people kissing Oprah instead of just hugging her. “We gotta watch that,” she said.
The “girls” were so devoted to Oprah in those days that they were afraid they sounded like Moonies when they talked about her. Some people referred to them as “the Oprah-ettes.”
“I was hired as Oprah’s speechwriter,” said her cousin Jo Baldwin. “I was also hired to tell her what not to say, but on those occasions I never said it in front of anyone. I always pulled her aside. Like when she ragged on welfare mothers on her show