Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [87]
“ ‘So we can have a double wedding then?’ Oprah said no.”
When she first started dating Stedman she burbled to her audiences about her new boyfriend, “Steddie”—how handsome he was, how romantic, how they might eventually marry, even have children. “I guess I’ll spoil any baby Stedman and I have,” she mused. “I already spoil his daughter, Wendy. I say to her and her friends, ‘Okay, I’ll give you a big shopping spree. You can have one hour at the store to buy whatever you want.’ ”
She talked to reporters about her “ticking clock.” “Some days I really want a girl because you can dress her up and she’d be so cute—she’d be like me. Then I think I’d want to have a boy because I’d like to name him Canaan. Canaan Graham is such a strong name.”
Years later she came closer to her own truth in a televised interview for A&E Biography in which she said, “I truly feel that what I went through at fourteen was a sign that children were not supposed to be part of the equation for me. I have conceived, I have given birth—and it didn’t work out for me. I’m comfortable with the decision to move on.”
Oprah said she surprised her best friend when she admitted she never really wanted children. “I said, ‘No, never.’ Even in seventh grade Gayle knew she wanted twins. She says, ‘If I hadn’t gotten married, I would have had a child. I would have felt like my life is not complete without a child.’ I don’t feel that at all.”
Having announced their engagement on television in 1992 and posed for People, Oprah later regretted talking so much about her relationship with Stedman. “Someone once told me, ‘Every time you mention his name, the perception is you’re doing it because you’re longing for something you cannot have.’ And it never occurred to me that that’s how it was being perceived.… But if I hadn’t [talked about him] then everybody would be asking, ‘Who’s the Mystery Man?’ ‘Is she a lesbian?’ ”
Years later people did begin to wonder. Some dismissed Oprah’s relationship with Stedman as a convenience for both, whispering about their sexuality and suggesting that each was helping the other hide same-sex preferences, especially Oprah, who was seen in public with Gayle King far more often than she was seen with Stedman. All three of them denied that they were homosexual, and so did their close friends, but the rumors persisted, particularly in Hollywood, where Oprah befriended a few glamorous female stars known as lipstick lesbians.
Soon she and Gayle and Stedman became fodder for comedians. Kathy Griffin, who won an Emmy in 2008 for her reality show, regaled a largely gay audience at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., by asking why Oprah had taken Gayle to the Emmys that year. “Can’t she go down in the basement and unleash Stedman? Just for one night?” The audience roared. “Oh, c’mon,” Griffin said. “You know I’m supportive of Oprah and her boyfriend, Gayle.”
On David Steinberg’s television show Robin Williams imitated Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking to Oprah on the phone. Williams crossed his legs, daintily pointed his toes, and put his hand to his ear. “Oh, dear. You say Stedman is wearing your clothes again? Not good. Not good at all.” The audience laughed at the send-up of Oprah’s partner as a cross-dresser.
By then the couple was almost inured to public derision. They felt they had faced the worst when News Extra, a Canadian tabloid, published a story titled “New Oprah Shocker! Fiancé Stedman Had Gay Sex with Cousin.” “That was the most difficult time for me,” Oprah told Laura Randolph of Ebony, sobbing as she recounted the story of Stedman’s gay cousin saying he had slept with Stedman at a local motel in Whitesboro, New Jersey. She said the rumor about Stedman’s sexuality “hurt him, hurt him bad,” and she blamed herself. “If I were lean and pretty, nobody would ever say that. What people were really saying is why would a straight, good-looking guy be with her?”
Oprah had brought the tabloid home to show Stedman. “He was so brave,” she said, “and I have never loved