Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [83]
The next night Joanna Molloy asked Stedman why he’d gotten so upset. “He was very grouchy. He said, ‘It’s my name, don’t wear it out.’ I instantly thought, ‘Oh, no. You are not bright enough to be Ms. Oprah Winfrey’s partner.’ ”
The actress E. Faye Butler knew Stedman from his modeling days. “We’d call him to model Johnson Products because he was handsome, but he was an awful model, so we’d make him stand still and have others move around him.… He was nice enough but boring as hell.… So boring … I remember he liked little petite light-skinned girls with straight hair, so I was surprised when he went with Oprah.”
“He’s a very somber person,” said Nancy Stoddart, “almost like he has a childhood wound. I remember him telling me once, ‘I used to be a really, really good basketball player, but my dad never came to a single one of my games.’ It’s the story of a child still hurting over a neglectful parent who never paid him any attention.”
Whether or not Stedman was drawn to Oprah’s money, he was definitely attracted to her brimming self-confidence and the easy way she moved to take her place in the world. “She absolutely transcends race,” he said. In contrast, his view of the world had been strapped by racism, as he had grown up in the all-black township of Whitesboro, New Jersey (population six hundred), and attended an all-black grade school. “If you are an African American in this country, you are a victim of perception,” he said. “You don’t have as much value as someone else, and when you walk into corporate America, your image is lessened. I never imagined that I could be equal to white folks.” Oprah never imagined she could be anything less.
“For 30 plus years I believed I was limited because of the color of my skin,” Stedman said. “I [eventually] learned it’s not about race but what it’s really about is the powerful against the powerless. What matters is power, control, and economics.” On this he and Oprah were in full agreement. “They both share the same pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps philosophy,” said Fran Johns, a close Chicago friend of Stedman’s.
After graduating from college in 1974, Stedman hoped to be drafted for the NBA, like his roommate Harvey Catchings. When he was rejected, he joined the Fort Worth Police Department. He married Glenda Ann Brown that same year, and their daughter, Wendy, was born seven months later. Stedman then joined the army for three and a half years and was stationed in Germany, where he says he played armed service basketball. He returned to the states and began working in the prison system in Englewood, Colorado. He and his wife separated in 1981, and in 1983 he moved with his girlfriend, Robin Robinson, to Chicago, when she was hired by WBBM-TV. Stedman transferred to the Metropolitan Correction Center and founded Athletes Against Drugs in 1985. He began dating Oprah then and quit the Bureau of Prisons in 1987, when he met Robert J. Brown, founder of B&C Associates in High Point, North Carolina.
“Stedman always had something to prove,” said Brown, who invited Stedman to accompany him on a trip to the Ivory Coast, where he was working with the government to attract business investors. Brown later hired Stedman as vice president of business development, which Stedman admitted was a glorified title for “trainee.” Brown, an African American, alienated many blacks with his stand against economic sanctions to force South Africa to abandon apartheid, but he became President Reagan’s choice to be U.S. ambassador to South Africa. However, he quickly withdrew his name after investigators began scrutinizing his business relationships with the former government of Nigeria and his union-busting activities. None of this concerned Stedman.
“[Brown’s] in public relations and he’s a multimillionaire,” he said. “He was a special assistant to President Nixon. He’s basically my mentor. Because of him I got to travel around the world and escort Mandela’s children down to South Africa when he was released from prison and have breakfast with Nelson Mandela. I got to visit the