Oprah Winfrey reveals a shocking family secret during her show, broadcast in Chicago Monday morning.
This past November Winfrey, 56, discovered a half-sister she never knew she had. Named Patricia, the sibling was given up for adoption as a child in 1963, and now lives in Milwaukee, Wisc.
Patricia had long been searching for the identity of the mother who gave her up for adoption; in 2007, she discovered that world-famous Winfrey was her half-sister!
As for Oprah, she says she was 9 years old and living with her father, Vernon, when her mother gave birth to Patricia and gave her up. Winfrey didn't even know about her mom's pregnancy, she says.
"I thought I'd seen it all," Winfrey teased about the discovery on Friday. "But this, my friends, is the miracle of all miracles. This literally shook me to my core."
Oprah's mother, Vernita Lee, who recently suffered a minor stroke, said she never told Winfrey about her half-sister, "because I thought it was a terrible thing for me to do, that I had done, gave up my daughter when she was born."
Winfrey said documents from the girl's birth reveal that Lee gave up the baby for adoption because she did not think she could get off welfare if she kept the child.
Source
