Oprah Winfrey' s Step Mum Barbara Winfrey Spills Some Dirty Secrets About Her

Oprah Winfrey's 66-year-old stepmother, Barbara Winfrey in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail UK, spills some dirty family secrets about Oprah. Barbara Winfrey who has been served with an eviction notice to vacate the $1.4million house that she has been living throughout her 14-year union to Oprah’s father, Vernon Winfrey, is breaking her silence and speaking publicly for the first time about her devastation at what she regards as Oprah’s callous and calculated betrayal.

According to Barbara's revelations, Oprah who is loved by millions is manipulative and high-handed, treats family like staff and uses her wealth to control others. Oprah played in a huge part in ‘destroying’ her marriage to her father. She claims that Oprah, 60, and longterm partner Stedman Graham, 63, are not bound by romance but a pragmatic cocktail of shared secrets, convenience and money.

She describes Oprah’s relationship with close confidante Gayle King, 59, as ‘bizarre’ and ‘unhealthy,’ and points to it as the reason that neither woman is married. And at the heart of it all, Barbara claims, the ‘real Oprah’ - hidden behind the image she projects so well – is a woman unhappy in her skin and, as Barbara has learned to her cost, unforgiving to those who inspire her wrath.

                                      How she met Oprah's father  Vernon Winfrey

Barbara was Vice Principal at Brentwood High School, a respected public school in Nashville, when she first met Vernon Winfrey. Winfrey’s barber shop in a rundown area of East Nashville was a local landmark – it has been there for more than 50 years – and his work as a local councilman made him a well-known figure in the community.
Barbara recalled: ‘I used to send difficult students to his shop to work there at weekends, sweep floors that sort of thing, help them stay out of trouble.’ Fifteen years after first meeting him, they reconnected and the passing acquaintance became something more.

They married on 17 June 2000 in a ceremony at Nashville’s Hermitage Hotel. Barbara claimed Oparh never wanted to attend her wedding in the first place and the first night in the house she wasn’t warm at all. Soon after their marriage, Vernon sold the house in which he had lived with his late wife,they got a place of their own but Barbara had no idea that her home was a gift never truly given.

According to Barbara, ‘Some people can have money and be mentally rich – secure in what they have I guess. But others, how can I put it…some people you can’t take the ghetto out of.

‘That’s Oprah, it’s who she is and where she’s from. She had money, everybody was going to know it and see it. But she had to be in control.’ It would be easy to be seduced by the riches of the world in which Oprah lives. Barbara revealed that  Oprah doesn’t want to know the truth of her past, and where she’s from.

Barbara said, ‘Vernon wanted to do the DNA test but Oprah said, “No.” I think she’s afraid because she knows it would prove he IS her father. She can’t quite believe that such a silly man could make such a magnificent creature.

Barbara's marriage to Oprah father ended after he cheated on her with a prostitute known as ‘One Tooth. Barbara struggled to cope with Vernon’s infidelity. Oprah knowing full well of what her father did, plotted against her and pushed her out of the scene.

Oprah refused to help financially when they were in the midst of rebuilding her father's barbershop.So Barbara, who worked in education for 32 years before retiring in 2006, secured a loan on a home she owned outright before she married Vernon, as collateral.

At the same time the couple were struggling to keep up with loan repayments on Barbra's old house, where her daughter and grandchild were living, instead of Oprah stepping in, she advised her father to let the bank foreclose.

According to Barbara, ‘Vernon had been telling everyone he was unhappy with the marriage. He told Stedman and he told Oprah, so she came up with an escape plan I guess to get me out of the picture, make all the scandal of what he’d done go away.
 ‘Vernon is a weak man. He let the situation run away from him.’ Barbara claimed that Oprah pressed Vernon to resolve the situation and divorce her.

 In June 2012 – on the anniversary of their wedding 12 years earlier - Barbara was blindsided when Vernon filed for divorce citing her unreasonable marital conduct.

She said, ‘I am 66 years old. My credit was ruined by the foreclosure. Who is going to rent me a home? I have to leave here on 29 May and I really don’t know what will come next.’
For the first time, the shadow of defeat passes across Barbara’s face,‘Oprah may have the right to do this. But is it the right thing to do?’

This is the first of a two-part world exclusive interview with Barbara Winfrey, the ex-wife of Oprah's father Vernon. In Part 2, to be published tomorrow, Mrs. Winfrey will reveal the shocking details of the big blowup between Oprah and her boyfriend Stedman Graham, the truth about her relationship with Gayle King and how she really feels about being in her own skin.