Oprah Winfrey turns 49 today.

                                                          
The talk show host, actress, entrepreneur, richest woman on the planet and an inspiration to thousands of people across the world, Oprah Winfrey turns 49 years today. Born January 29, 1954. Mississippi, USA.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised. Winfrey was intended to be named "Orpah" after the biblical character in the Book of Ruth, but it was misspelled on her birth certificate, and Oprah stuck.
After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which the local children made fun of her.
At 13, after suffering years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home. Claimed to have been raped at age nine and becoming pregnant at 14; but her son died in infancy.

At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Winfrey's career choice in media would not have surprised her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property.