Yesterday, Martha Stewart tweeted a 1982 picture of three big-haired ladies: Stewart, PR pro Susan Magrino, and a former Baltimore news anchor named Oprah Winfrey. This blast from the past made us nostalgic for Oprah’s Baltimore days.
When Oprah first started co-anchoring WJZ’s six-o’clock news program in 1976, the station promoted her with the tag line “What’s an Oprah?”. Just 22 years old, she struggled with the high-profile job–and a co-anchor who didn’t appreciate having to share the spotlight with a young woman. After a year she was fired…
Only to be re-hired to run the new talk show, People Are Talking, co-hosted by veteran Baltimore reporter Richard Sher. That show was a hit–and the rest is history. For more on Oprah’s Baltimore days — including the one-woman show she put on at Goucher and the time she auditioned for a role at CenterStage (and was furious when she wasn’t cast!), check out these great Baltimore-Oprah histories from Baltimore Magazine and the Baltimore Sun.
