Oprah Winfrey has not 'one regret' about choosing not to marry or have children
Oprah Winfrey loves her life and has no regrets about how she's been living it. The media mogul addressed her decision not to marry or have children in an interview for People's Women Changing the World issue, explaining she gave a lot of thought to both.
"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,'" the 65-year-old billionaire said. Winfrey explained how she saw "the depth of responsibility and sacrifice that is actually required to be a mother" during her years on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
"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,'" she revealed. "I don’t have the ability to compartmentalize 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."
She continued, "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."
Winfrey met her longtime love, Stedman Graham, in 1986 at a charity event.
"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," she explained.
"Both he and I now say, 'If we had married, we would not be together,'" she added. "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."
Winfrey declared, "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."
The Academy opened in 2007. "Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had," Winfrey explained. "In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal."
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