Oprah Winfrey Explains Why She 'Never' Thought She'd 'Make It' to 60

Mar. 15, 2025

Oprah Winfrey on March 16, 2024.Photo:Kevin Winter/Getty

Kevin Winter/Getty

Oprah Winfreyis reflecting on her childhood.

When Winfrey, 70, appeared on theTodayshowTuesday, Aug. 20, to help celebrateAl Rokeras he turned 70, the pair sat down for a conversation about aging.

“I don’t know why,” she added. “I think I had a vision of it when I was a kid and I think it is because under the circumstances that I was living [in] when I was a little girl in Milwaukee on welfare with my mother. What I now know is if I had stayed in those circumstances, I probably wouldn’t be here, healthy and strong and vibrant.”

Winfrey was born to her single motherVernita Lee— who died in 2018 at age 83 — in 1954 and grew up in poverty, living in Mississippi, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Tennessee at different times in her childhood. She has additionally spoken aboutexperiencing sexual abuse as a child and a teenager, before she eventually embarked on her career in news media and entertainment.

When Roker asked Winfrey if she felt her “concept of gratitude” had deepened with age during herTodayshow appearance, she answered, “I would not say that it’s deeper Al, because I’ve been doing it for so long. I would say that there’s a sense of knowing that there isn’t as much time life and I am at peace with that knowing.”

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“And there’s a sense of urgency, for me, about living well,” she added. “And so that’s all about health.”

Oprah Winfrey on Dec. 5, 2023.Phillip Faraone/Getty

Phillip Faraone/Getty

Winfrey has long said she never expected to live as long as she has. In 2019, she told PEOPLE that she never even imagined she wouldlive past age 56and cited a dream she once had as the reason why. “When I got to 57, it was like, ‘Why did all my life I think it was going to be 56?' " she said. “At the time I started having this vision of 56, it was when I was in Milwaukee and I was trapped in a world where I could see how dire it was."

source: people.com