Oprah Winfrey is celebrating life.
In a conversation with Al Roker on “Today,” Winfrey reflected on turning 70 in January, a milestone she wasn’t sure she’d reach.
“I remember many, many years ago as a young girl, I had always thought that I would never make it to the 60s or 70s,” the talk show host said Tuesday. “I had this number in my head that I thought, ‘OK, I’m gonna be out by then.’
“I think I had a vision of it when I was a kid, and I think it’s because under the circumstances that I was living when I was a little girl in Milwaukee on welfare with my mother and what I now know, that if I had stayed in those circumstances, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Winfrey said. “I wouldn’t be here healthy and strong and vibrant.”
After Roker asked the television star if her “concept of gratitude” was more profound at this point in her life, Winfrey clarified.
“I would not say that it’s deeper, Al, because I have been doing it for so long,” she said. “I would say that there is a sense of knowing that there isn’t as much time left, and I am at peace with that knowing.”
“The Color Purple” producer continued: “My great gift is being able to live in the present moment. I think it’s really the thing that brings me the greatest joy. Because no matter what’s going on in your life, you can compartmentalize and be just right here, right now. So, I’m not a worrier, I will worry about the thing when the thing shows up.”
Throughout her years, Winfrey struggled with health issues, causing her to undergo surgery on both her knees.
“The Oprah Winfrey Show” alum recalled the conversation with her doctors that solidified that surgery was her only option.
“A couple of years ago, 2021, I had knee surgery on one knee, and I had been becoming more and more debilitated to the point where it was hard to walk down even two steps, just to get into the car,” Winfrey told Roker. “And when I finally went to the knee doctor, and I said, ‘I don’t know, is it time?’ and he goes, ‘It’s time if you want to continue walking. Do you like walking? Then it’s time, it’s time.’ ”
Despite her initial fear, the procedure gave her a new lease on life.
“And so, I’d never been through surgery or … [I] was intimidated by it,” Winfrey continued. “The best thing I’ve ever done, I really felt like I had a new opportunity to live inside my body in a way that I hadn’t been able to for years because being overweight and the being overweight causing the knees to be even worse.”
Roker was also celebrating a milestone Tuesday — his 70th birthday.
Roker questioned Winfrey if she felt like she had accomplished what she was put on Earth to do.
“I feel like it continues,” Winfrey said. “I think until the last breath it continues, and I think that ultimately there is no offering greater than your love. And it doesn’t matter if you were giving that love through your broadcast audience, you are able to speak to millions of people or you’re just speaking to one, people may forget what you did or what you said, but they never forget how you made them feel.”
She noted that how you make people feel becomes “your legacy.”
Winfrey also urged Roker to embrace this new decade.
“Don’t be scared, Al,” she quipped. “It’s gonna be all right, it’s gonna be all right [and] you know why? Because you have already overcome some of the greatest challenges. I mean, you can tell us what it’s like to almost not make it and what it means to have the most vital part of your life in order, and that is your health.”
Roker took a leave of absence in late 2022 after being hospitalized for blood clots in his lungs and legs. In May 2023, the anchor underwent his second knee replacement surgery.
“What is amazing is that your heart has been pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping for you for 69 solid years,” Winfrey remarked, “almost getting you there to 70 and it’s been doing that right on time! Just for you!”
Over the years, the “Black Cake” producer has also been vocal about her weight struggles.
In December, Winfrey revealed that along with using a holistic approach to shedding pounds, which includes exercise and lifestyle tweaks, she also uses weight-loss medication.
“It was public sport to make fun of me for 25 years,” she told People at the time. “I have been blamed and shamed, and I blamed and shamed myself.”
Winfrey said weight fluctuations “occupied five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like why can’t I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing.”
Shedding light onto her new lifestyle, the “Super Soul Sunday” host stated, “After knee surgery, I started hiking and setting new distance goals each week. I could eventually hike 3 to 5 miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends. I felt stronger, more fit and more alive than I’d felt in years.”
Now, as Winfrey put it, “I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the WeightWatchers principles of counting points. I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way.”
