Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [86]
Stedman said that being called “whitey” forced him to prove himself in his small black community. In addition, he had to cope with the social stigma heaped on the family by the learning disabilities of his two younger brothers, James and Darras. “Back then they were called retarded, though now they are described as developmentally disabled,” he said. “Today there are many support groups and programs to help families deal with mental disabilities, but we didn’t have access to those years ago.” He refuted Carlton Jones’s claim that his parents were first cousins, which could have contributed to the mental disabilities of his brothers. Stedman said his proof could be found in a family history titled A Story of the Descendants of Benjamin Spaulding.
His cousin Carlton said that while Stedman was growing up his parents would not let him bring black friends home. “His father would tell him, ‘I don’t want you bringing those black bastards into my house!’ and he meant it. Stedman never brought his wife or his daughter home for the same reason.” It took him several years to bring Oprah to Whitesboro, but she took him to Nashville to meet her father soon after they started dating.
At that point Stedman was still trying to cope with people shoving him aside to get Oprah’s autograph and interrupting their restaurant meals to hug her. He couldn’t understand why she tolerated the intrusions or how she derived any pleasure from the attention of rude strangers. In Nashville he sat slumped in Vernon’s barbershop while people from the neighborhood flocked to see her, touch her, photograph her, and even sing to her. He wondered out loud if she had the ability to differentiate between people who were meaningful and those who just wanted to be around a celebrity. “Who’s here after all these people are gone?” he asked. “Who really cares about her? I don’t think she really understands, or maybe she understands and hasn’t let that understanding affect her. But Oprah has been through so much, a tough childhood, a broken family, that it’s kind of hard to say this is something she shouldn’t enjoy.”
Oprah and Stedman eventually became life partners, but even after living together for more than two decades they have not married. “You know I say all the time, ‘Stedman, if we had married we wouldn’t be together,’ ” she told Jann Carl of ET. “And he says, ‘For sure. For sure we wouldn’t.’ [Ours] is not a traditional relationship, and marriage is a traditional institution, and certain expectations come with marriage. The truth is he has a life … he has his work … and I have mine, and it just wouldn’t work.”
Her father agreed. “Forget about a wedding,” he said in 2008. “It will never happen.… She won’t ever marry Stedman because … she’s all for herself and not about to give up anything for anyone.… She’s content with who she is. With Oprah it’s root hog or die poor.” Vernon Winfrey, then seventy-five and still working in his barbershop, explained that hogs must root for food or die of starvation, implying that Oprah needed to root for riches more than she needed to nourish a relationship. She seemed to confirm her father’s assessment when she pronounced herself in favor of prenuptial agreements. “[They] imply you’re not stupid,” she said. “If somebody ever even tried to tell me they wanted to come and take half of everything I had—Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh—the thought!” She also told TV Guide, “Marriage to me means offering—sacrificing—yourself to the relationship. To become one with the relationship. I’m not capable of doing that right now.”
“Not now, not ever,” said Vernon, shaking his head. “My wife, Zelma, died in 1996, and a few years later, when I started seeing the woman [Barbara Williams] who became my second wife, Oprah called me. ‘Are you in love?’ she asked.
“ ‘Can you fall in love more than once?’ I asked her.
“ ‘Yeah,’ she said.
“ ‘No, you can’t,’ I told her. ‘But my daddy used to say, “You can marry in like and then grow fonder. It’s either that or you’ll wander and go yonder.” So I’m in like.’
“Oprah said, ‘Daddy,