After 14 years of marriage to Oprah's father Vernon, Barbara Winfrey is being forced out of her marital home by Oprah, leaving her homeless
Barbara refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with Oprah
'You say I never talk to you,' Oprah told Barbara in a birthday phone call. 'I'm talking to you now. You have until Monday to get out of MY house'
When Oprah threw her Legends' Ball, Vernon and Barbara weren't on the main floor with the A-listers but tucked in a corner on the second floor. 'We weren't allowed to mingle with the celebrities,' says Barbara
Earlier this month Barbara was finally served with an eviction notice. She has until 29 May to vacate the $1.4million house just south of Nashville that was home throughout her 14-year union to Oprah’s father, Vernon Winfrey.
I have lost everything. It’s not just a house, this is my home. All my memories are here.
‘I’m trying to keep it together but there are some days I just don’t understand how I could have made her so angry that she would kick me out on the street and think nothing about it. But that’s Oprah – she’s judge and jury.’
She claims that Oprah, 60, and longterm partner Stedman Graham, 63, are not bound by romance but a pragmatic cocktail of shared secrets, convenience and money.
‘My crime, I think, was to talk to her like a normal person and she didn’t like that one bit'
- Barbara Winfrey
She describes Oprah’s relationship with close confidante Gayle King, 59, as ‘bizarre’ and ‘unhealthy,’ and points to it as the reason that neither woman is married.
And at the heart of it all, Barbara claims, the ‘real Oprah’ - hidden behind the image she projects so well – is a woman unhappy in her skin and, as Barbara has learned to her cost, unforgiving to those who inspire her wrath.
Barbara said, ‘You find out quickly where your place is with Oprah and you get in that place and you stay in that place.
‘My crime, I think, was to talk to her like a normal person and she didn’t like that one bit.’
prah, according to Barbara, largely ignored her and her father – a pattern that would be repeated in visits and social occasions across the years.
Soon after their marriage, Vernon sold the house in which he had lived with his late wife and, thanks to Oprah, Barbara and Vernon got a place of their own.
She explained, ‘My husband once told me that just because someone gives you something does not mean they love you. He was talking about Oprah.
‘Her brand is that she’s a nice, caring, generous, giving person. That’s not how it is. She’s controlling – it’s all about control.
‘She has confidentiality agreements with pretty much everybody in her life. She has them sign their life away and she has them in her pocket.
She explained, ‘My husband once told me that just because someone gives you something does not mean they love you. He was talking about Oprah.
‘Her brand is that she’s a nice, caring, generous, giving person. That’s not how it is. She’s controlling – it’s all about control.
‘She has confidentiality agreements with pretty much everybody in her life. She has them sign their life away and she has them in her pocket.
She explained, ‘My husband once told me that just because someone gives you something does not mean they love you. He was talking about Oprah.
‘Her brand is that she’s a nice, caring, generous, giving person. That’s not how it is. She’s controlling – it’s all about control.
‘She has confidentiality agreements with pretty much everybody in her life. She has them sign their life away and she has them in her pocket.
It was the revelation of his weeklong ‘affair’ with a prostitute known as ‘One Tooth’ that was the final undoing of his marriage to Barbara.
The woman taped her barbershop liaisons with Winfrey and originally intended to blackmail him. Instead the truth came tumbling out three years ago.
Barbara said, ‘Oprah is a woman who empowers women to be all they can be, to stand up against men who mistreat them.
‘If she was a more decent person she would realize that what her dad did was very wrong instead of plotting against me and pushing me out of the scene.’
At the time Barbara and Vernon were in the midst of rebuilding his barbershop. After 47 years it was in dire need of renovation, Barbara explained.
Oprah refused to help financially. So Barbara, who worked in education for 32 years before retiring in 2006, secured a loan on a home she owned outright before she married Vernon, as collateral. This was to prove a crucial and costly decision.
By her own admission Barbara struggled to cope with Vernon’s infidelity. She moved out of the marital bedroom but she was not, she insisted, looking to end her marriage.
She said, ‘I couldn’t be the wife he wanted me to be but I might have gotten over it.’
But Vernon, she said, was impatient and, frustrated, left the marital home that summer in a move that, as it turned out, proved final.
Barbara claimed that Oprah pressed Vernon to resolve the situation and divorce her.
In June 2012 – on the anniversary of their wedding 12 years earlier - Barbara was blindsided when Vernon filed for divorce citing her unreasonable marital conduct.
Culled from D.M
No comments:
Post a Comment