The end of the Oprah Winfrey show is quickly approaching and before Oprah heads west to Los Angeles and a new cable station the talk show queen will find herself saying goodbye to her beloved city of Chicago. The associated Press recently interviewed Oprah on her new endeavors, the Oprah Winfrey show and life without Chicago.
” When I first flew into Chicago on Labor Day 1983 to audition for A.M. Chicago, I remember thinking when I left the city that if I don’t get the job I’m gonna find a way to get back because I just love the city, ” said Oprah.
“Because it couldn’t have happened without Chicago,” she said. “It couldn’t have happened without Chicago.”
Winfrey came to Chicago in 1984 to WLS-TV’s morning talk show, “A.M. Chicago.” A month later the show was No. 1 in the market. A year later it was renamed “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
During those early days Winfrey had a small corner office with two rows of desks where her producers sat, remembers Joel Daly, a retired longtime news anchor for the ABC affiliate.
“You’d go down after her show and she’d be walking around in a bathrobe and slippers,” Daly said.
“We moved here 10 years ago to a section of Randolph Street that was pretty desolate, but it always felt safer because we knew Harpo was down the street,” said Ina Pinkney, who owns the breakfast and lunch restaurant Ina’s.
Winfrey is often given credit for transforming the once-gritty industrial enclave to a neighborhood filled with families pushing strollers and walking their dogs.
Art Smith was once Winfrey’s personal chef, a job he earned after cooking lunches for Winfrey at Harpo. He now is executive chef and co-owns Chicago’s upscale Southern restaurant Table fifty-two.
Winfrey brought celebrities, politicians and other famous and interesting people to Chicago, Smith said. He remembers becoming star-struck when Winfrey told him former South African President Nelson Mandela was visiting.
“You can’t go any place in the world that doesn’t know who Oprah Winfrey is or Chicago,” Smith said. “She’s been such an important part of the fabric of the city.”
Winfrey was visible in Chicago, shutting down Michigan Avenue in September 2009 to film her season premiere with the Black Eyed Peas.
“Isn’t this the most fabulous city in the world?” Winfrey yelled to more than 20,000 fans who crowded Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
Winfrey told Fortune magazine in the fall that she planned on keeping only a small part of her 13,000-square-foot apartment off Michigan Avenue. And Rosie O’Donnell is to begin taping her talk show for OWN at Harpo Studios.
On Wednesday, Daley named the street outside Harpo Studios “Oprah Winfrey Way” and earlier this month she was inducted into the Illinois Broadcasters Association’s Hall of Fame.
The truth that will slowly emerge in Chicago is that Winfrey won’t be present taping talk shows every day. There will no strategy sessions about nabbing Oprah tickets or gossip about seeing the talk show queen out on the town.
Will Chicago feel diminished in a post-Oprah era, the way Brooklyn felt when the Dodgers bolted to Los Angeles?
Whether Oprah heads west to Los Angeles or east to New York City, Oprah will remain in our hearts and the city of Chicago will probably never be the same.
