NEW YORK – Oprah Winfrey’s big secret is out – she has a long lost sister. The media mogul announced on Friday she would start this week by making a personal confession during ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’. On the programme, due to air in the U.S. on Monday afternoon, the TV mogul opens up about her family history and reveals she has a secret half-sister called Patricia, who was given up for adoption by Winfrey’s mother, Vernita Lee, in 1963 when the star was nine years old. Winfrey says, “I was nine years old at the time of (Patricia’s adoption), living with my father in Nashville, Tennessee.
I had no idea my mother was even pregnant…. For the most part, my life has been an open book and on the show I think I’ve seen about everything. And I thought nothing could surprise me anymore, but let me tell you I was wrong.” Patricia, from Milwaukee, is said to have found out about her famous sibling in 2007, while Winfrey learned about her relative last November.
The two met for the first time over the Thanksgiving holiday, while Winfrey, Patricia and their mother were all reunited on the show. Winfrey’s personal life has been well documented. She was born in Mississippi to unmarried parents and raised by her grandmother early in her childhood.
