Tobias Sylvester
65-year-old billionaire mogul, Oprah Winfrey says she has no regrets about not being married and having kids like every other person.
Oprah Winfrey has been in a relationship with long-time partner Stedman Graham for 33 years. And, despite getting engaged in 1992, the couple have never tied the knot or expanded their family.
During an interview with People Magazine, Winfrey revealed that once consider becoming a mother following Graham’s proposal, however, due to the demands of her talk show, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she had to sacrifice.
“At one point in Chicago I had bought an additional apartment because I was thinking, Well, if we get married, I’m going to need room for children.
“I realized, ‘Whoa, I’m talking to a lot of messed-up people, and they are messed up because they had mothers and fathers who were not aware of how serious that job is.
“I don’t have the ability to compartmentalise the way I see other women do. It is why, throughout my years, I have had the highest regard for women who choose to be at home [with] their kids, because I don’t know how you do that all day long.
“Nobody gives women the credit they deserve,” Oprah said.
Winfrey continued by explaining why she and Graham decided to remain engaged for so long, admitting that she believes things “would have changed” if they had got married.
“I used to think about this all the time, that I was working these 17-hour days, and so were my producers, and then I go home and I have my two dogs and I have Stedman, who’s letting me be who I need to be in the world,” she said.
“He’s never demanding anything from me like, ‘Where’s my breakfast? Where’s my dinner?’ Never any of that, which I believed would have changed had we married.
“Both he and I now say, ‘If we had married, we would not be together.
“No question about it – we would not stay married because of what that would have meant to him, and I would have had my own ideas about it,” she added.
Winfrey said she doesn’t look back and regry or wonder at what might have been because some how she has fulfilled her maternal role.
“I have not had one regret about that. I also believe that part of the reason why I don’t have regrets is because I got to fulfill it in the way that was best for me: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
“Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill – I’m overflowed with maternal,” she said
