Oprah Winfrey announced on her show Monday that she has discovered a half-sister Patricia whom she didn't even know she had, because Patricia was secretly given up for adoption in 1963.
According to Huffington Post, Oprah's mother never told Oprah she has a half-sister. Oprah says her mother could not afford to keep Patricia.
Patricia said that she discovered Oprah was her half-sister in 2007 while searching for her birth mother. For the next three years, she was trying to contact Winfrey with the news and finally reached her late last year.
Patricia, who lives in Milwaukee, is believed to be 48 and has two adult children, a daughter and a son. Patricia said that she continued her quest to contact her half-sister so her children could know their aunt.
Patricia and Oprah were publicly reunited on Monday's show, which highlighted video of Oprah and her partner Steadman Graham driving to Milwaukee to meet Patricia. The reunion occurred on Thanksgiving Day last year.
Oprah Winfrey's big family secret? The talk-show queen announced on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' Monday that she has discovered a half-sister, named Patricia, who was secretly given up for adoption in 1963. Patricia, who lives in Milwaukee, said that she discovered Oprah was her half-sister while searching for her birth mother in 2007. She spent the next three years trying to contact Winfrey with the news and finally reached her late last year. They met on Thanksgiving Day.
Winfrey was 9 and living with her father, Vernon Winfrey, in 1963 and said she had no idea her mother, Vernita Lee, was even pregnant. According to Winfrey, her mother could not afford to keep Patricia.
In a confusing twist, Winfrey's previously known half-sister, who passed away in 2003, was also named Patricia and lived in Milwaukee. Oprah said that her mom did not name the daughter she gave away and that it was just a coincidence.
Patricia is believed to be 48 and has two adult children, a son and a daughter, meaning Winfrey has a niece and nephew to add to the family as well. Patricia said that she continued her quest to contact Winfrey so her children could know their aunt.
Winfrey praised her half-sister for not going to the press with the story.
It's been a revelatory year for Oprah Winfrey, who, as her legendary talk show winds down its 25th and final year on the air, has stepped out of her comfort zone to address a number of rumors about herself, including talk that her friendship with Gayle King is actually a romantic relationship and her thoughts of suicide as a teenager after she learned of an unwanted pregnancy.
"I was given some news that literally shook me to my core. This time, I'm the one being reunited," Winfrey said in advertisements for today's episode of 'Oprah.' "I was keeping a family secret for months, and on Monday you're going to hear it straight from me."
Earlier Monday, BlackVoices.com reported that Winfrey learned sometime around Thanksgiving of last year that her mother had another daughter. Winfrey, 56, believed for years that she was her parents' only surviving child after her two younger siblings, Jeffrey and Patricia, passed away.
As soon as Winfrey announced that she would reveal "news that literally shook me to my core" about "a family secret," the Internet lit up with speculation. "There has been speculation in the past that Vernon Winfrey is not her biological father," In Touch Weekly Senior Editor Amy Palmer told CBS News, "so this is something people are saying it could be."
Others -- including Kitty Kelley, who famously wrote an unauthorized biography of Winfrey last year -- had been correctly claiming that Winfrey would reveal a long-lost family member.
