Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [82]
On the heels of her multimillions came thirty-five-year-old Stedman Sardar Graham, the man she had been telling audiences was walking (“slowly, very slowly”) from Africa to be her Mr. Right. “He’s coming, I just know it,” she said, “and when he finally shows up, please God make him tall.”
Graham, a prison guard by day and a part-time model by night, was handsome and light-skinned. “He’s terrific,” said Oprah. “Six feet six of terrific.” A little too terrific for her protective staff, who wondered why such a gorgeous man would be attracted to their overweight boss.
“I remember they were very worried about why Stedman was dating her,” said Nancy Stoddart. “When we went skiing together, Oprah was so fat that she had to buy her ski clothes in the men’s department.”
Oprah acknowledged her employees’ concern. “They figured if he looked like that, he had to be either a jerk or want something,” she said. “He was so handsome—oooh, what a body—so I figured the same thing. If he’s calling me … there’s something wrong with him I should know about.” She turned him down the first few times he asked her out. “I thought he was kind of dorky because everyone said what a nice guy he was [and] I’m used to being mistreated. I’m not used to a nice guy who’s gonna treat me well.”
When she finally did accept a date, Stedman arrived with roses and paid for dinner. After several more dates people assumed he was after her money. “They say, ‘She’s this fat girl and he’s this hot-looking guy, what else could there be?’ [But] that invalidates me as a person,” said Oprah. “Even though I understand, because when he first asked me out, that’s exactly what I thought. But Stedman’s spirit is so totally the opposite of somebody who’s out to get something material from the relationship.”
She told Ladies’ Home Journal, “The rumors are classic jealousy. One of the reasons they persist is that Stedman’s so good-looking, and I’m not the kind of woman you’d expect him to have. I’m over-weight, I’m not fair skinned and I’m not white. So you would think a guy who looks like that would be with Diahann Carroll or Jayne Kennedy or some willowy blonde.”
Still Stedman became a national punch line and the butt of cruel jokes. During a break in taping the NAACP Image Awards, the comic Sinbad was entertaining the audience when he spotted Oprah and Stedman returning to their seats. “Look at Stedman, following Oprah’s purse around,” he jabbed. “I’m surprised he’s not carrying it for her!” Stedman wasn’t even safe among his friends. The former ABC-TV anchor Max Robinson teased, “She’ll eat you out of house and home, brother. It’s a good thing she owns them.”
In later years some saw Stedman as more drone than predator. Debra Pickett, who wrote a “Lunch With” column for the Chicago Sun-Times, pronounced him the “biggest disappointment of the year.” She wrote, “Graham, who is impossibly good-looking but incredibly dull, broke my heart by demonstrating that his life partner, Oprah, must be at least as shallow as the rest of us, since she clearly didn’t fall for his conversational skills.” New York Daily News columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy were equally disappointed to find no humor behind the handsome façade. They reported that when Stedman accompanied Oprah to the Essence Awards at Radio City Music Hall, he was the only one not laughing at Bill Cosby’s teasing from the stage.
“Stedman—is that a real name?” Cosby said, looking at the couple sitting in the front row. “I thought it’s something he’d tell you at a party. ‘I’m a steady man.’ ”
Oprah and the rest of the audience roared with laughter, but Stedman leveled a blank stare at Cosby. Afterward the comedian took Oprah aside backstage.
“What’s the matter with him? Usually when people make fun of you, you laugh and go ha, ha, ha,” Cosby told Oprah. “But he just