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Oprah Winfrey Opens Up About ‘Secret Son’ Calvin Mitchell

Oprah Winfrey 2004

Does Oprah Winfrey have a secret son? According to the billionaire media mogul, she does not. However, after a man awkwardly ambushed her earlier this month, rumors sparked of a long-lost child.

As it turns out, the man who ambushed her on October 15 is none other than Calvin Mitchell, a man who Winfrey took under her wing over 20 years ago – when the man was still a boy.

The two became acquainted after a chance encounter in the Chicago projects. At the time, Oprah was on set during a break from shooting when a “cute little sparkly-eyed boy came underneath the yellow tape” to hand her a soda, the OWN Network CEO and founder told Entertainment Tonight.

We were shooting in the projects in Chicago and I was sitting on set during a break, and this cute little sparkly-eyed boy came underneath the yellow tape to hand me a soda

Winfrey was “so charmed” by the young boy that she started talking to him and eventually discovered that he was in a difficult situation in which he was stuck in the projects with his at the time unemployed mother. In light of all this, she decided to lend a helping hand as the NY Daily News reports that she not only helped send Calvin to private school, but also aided his mother in locking down a job. However, despite her efforts, Calvin was unable to adapt to the privileged education he’d been gifted.

After Calvin failed to make it work at not one, but two private schools, Winfrey called it quits.

In her last conversation with Calvin, which took place back in the early 1990s, she recollects having said to the then 16-year-old that if he left the school, that was it, she was “done.”

This is a seminal moment for you. I know you are 16 and can’t see the road ahead, but if you leave this school and refuse to get an education — I have tried to offer you an education twice — there isn’t another school I can put you in. If you leave this school, I am done. There is nothing else I can do.’ (…) And that was my last conversation with Calvin in the early ’90s.

Earlier this month, when the two ran into each other in a not-so-chance encounter that was reportedly orchestrated in part by The National Enquirer, she didn’t recognize him at first but later instructed a staffer to retrieve his phone number.

In regards to the experience she had with Calvin growing up, she said, “If you really want to change somebody’s life, you’ve got to be able to spend enough time with them to change the way they think about what their life can be.” She added, it’s not “enough to give a person a new life or money or a new car, you have to teach them how to fish themselves.”

Oprah, a multi-billionaire according to Forbes, recently made tens of millions of dollars on Wall Street when her recently announced stake in Weight Watchers doubled in value following news of her investment in the company.

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