Oprah’s Last Show Remembered By Coachella Valley Residents

Coachella Valley resident Michael Simmons was just 17 years old when he went on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“I got to meet Oprah before and after the show and it was really great,” Simmons said. “She’s a great person. She’s the same with the camera on as with the camera off.”

Oprah featured him on her show back in December 1995 — “How I Made a Million Before 35.”

Simmons, who made his fortune in computers, was the youngest millionaire on the show.

“When I first got the call from the producers I deleted it, because i thought it was a prank call,” Simmons said.

Last year, another desert resident got to meet Oprah. Farah Meadows is a teacher at John Glenn Middle School. She was chosen as one of Oprah’s Ultimate Viewers, which meant Meadows flew with Oprah and 300 other fans to Australia.

“We got about 10 minutes with her to just look her in the face and say, ‘thank you’ for making me a better person,” Meadows said. “And the one thing that was interesting is I told her that my classroom is like my talk show where I can influence my students, and she said, ‘It’s funny, Farah, because my talk show is my classroom.”

One person who made a living off Oprah is controversial author Kitty Kelley. Her unauthorized biography last year made it to No. 1 on the New York Times Best-Seller List.

“Oprah is very very controlling,” Kelley said. “She makes everyone in her life sign a confidentiality agreement that they will never talk about her.”

To research the book, Kelley interviewed Oprah’s family, classmates and employees. She also collected every interview she could find with the queen of talk from the last 25 years, and she filed them by subject and date. What she uncovered is a very different picture than the one we see on TV every afternoon.

“This woman who appears so open and warm and embracing, she is all of those things she appears on camera,” Kelley said. “But off camera she’s not. She’s controlling, she’s aloof and very very secretive.”

Kelley also says she uncovered the identity of Winfrey’s biological father. The author says one of Oprah’s relatives told her in 2007. It’s something the talk show host wants to know. But, Kelley says she won’t reveal his identity until Oprah’s mother tells her daughter the news herself, something she, so far, refuses to do.

“There are secrets Oprah keeps from her family, from other people, and there are secrets to this day that her family keeps from Oprah,” Kelley said. “For instance, as we are sitting here talking, her mother has never told her who her true biological father is.”

It’s still not clear what Oprah will do next. She launched her own cable network earlier this year, but she will not have a daily program.

“We are going to miss the 4 o’clock appointments with Oprah Winfrey,” Kelley said. “We’re very much going to miss this.”