Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [168]
People wrote about Oprah and Gayle as if they were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, although they did not live together, and they categorically denied they were lovers. There was no foundation for the rumors of a lesbian relationship, except for their constant togetherness and Oprah’s bizarre teasing of the subject.
Her cousin, Jo Baldwin, who once worked for Oprah, brushed off the subject of Oprah’s attraction to women in an email: “Anything is possible but I wouldn’t dare say it.”
A prominent gossip columnist for the New York Daily News who has observed Oprah for years is convinced. “My gaydar first went up when I covered an event at Radio City Music Hall [April 14, 2000] and watched Oprah and Gayle walk the red carpet with their pinkie fingers linked and Stedman trailing behind them. Then came the huge, no-expense-spared launch of O magazine a couple nights later when Oprah installed Gayle as Editor-at-Large. If you get the text of Oprah’s remarks, you’ll see that she sounded like the husband who gives his trophy wife everything.… It was all in jest but …”
Onstage at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Pavilion the night of April 17, 2000, Oprah introduced Gayle to a teeming crowd of alpha females (Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Martha Stewart, Rosie O’Donnell, Maria Shriver, Diana Ross, Tina Turner), saying, “I’m known to be a good gift-giver. You’ve read rumors. It’s true.… Over the years I’ve given Gayle a lot of great gifts.” She then regaled the crowd in a Southern singsong voice. “I gave Gayle her nanny when she had her first chile, and then her second chile; we got extra hailp. I built the swimmin’ pool for the children.” The audience roared. “Paid for the children’s private schools. Bought her a BMW for da birthday.” The audience laughed as Oprah catalogued her largesse and her friend’s indebtedness. Adopting a meek little voice to imitate Gayle, she continued, “Oh, I just don’t know, I don’t know what I can ever do to repay you. The children, we can never repay you. There’s nothing we can do to repay you.” The punch line came after Gayle quit her job in Hartford, started commuting to the Hearst offices in New York to help launch Oprah’s magazine, and began working so hard that she finally said, “Bitch, I don’t owe you nothing!” The audience screamed with laughter.
While Oprah had a live-in male partner, she seemed to spend more time with Gayle, and she talked about her best girlfriend at every turn, providing for her and her children in a way few men ever could. Oprah moved Gayle to New York City to take over O magazine, bought her a $7.5 million apartment in Manhattan in addition to her $3.6 million house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and traveled the world with her, sometimes with Stedman in tow, sometimes not.
Part of Oprah’s strong fan base was in black churches, where traditional marriage between a man and a woman is honored. As one of their own, Oprah was a shining example to the world of African American achievement, and few would ever publicly criticize her, but there were murmurs among some black ministers that, despite her grand success, Oprah was not the best role model for young African American girls. For whatever reason, she was not prepared to make the commitment to marriage: “I can choose not to be married, if I want,” she said, opting for the comfort and acceptance of being a couple in a coupled society. Yet her living situation with Stedman, her close friendship with Gayle, and her departure from the church in which she was raised made some in the black community wonder about her sexual moorings. While Oprah denied being a lesbian, she seemed to deliberately provoke discussion of her sexuality by issuing bizarre denials to questions no one asked, as if she wanted