Oprah Winfrey has always kept her fans in the know when it comes to her family matters. (Remember her famous on-camera intro to her long lost half-sister?) But her latest family reunion is taking a nasty turn!
The “Oprah’s Next Chapter” host recently purchased her dad, Vernon’s, Nashville barber shop out of foreclosure. But Vernon’s wife, Barbara, isn’t exactly happy about the sale.
Barbara Winfrey told WSMV-TV: “I know what is going on. I’m tired of it, and I’ve had enough….People are giving him the wrong advice and it’s leaving me in a situation.”
Vernon Winfrey’s barbershop has been a fixture in the Nashville community for 50 years, but a new building purchased last year went upside down. While Barbara Winfrey said she had plans for a loan in place, she told WSMV that her husband refused to sign off on it. In the end, Oprah purchased the property for $475,000.
So what does this sale mean for the landmark Nashville shop? Oprah’s spokeswoman said that Vernon Winfrey “will continue to manage the business of a day to day basis.”
But an angry Barbara Winfrey said of the OWN head honcho: “His daughter doesn’t care about the community. His daughter doesn’t care about the barber shop. But I do.”
This isn’t Oprah’s first public family squabble.
While last year’s meeting with newly discovered half-sister, Patricia, was of the heartwarming variety (she publicly embraced the shocking news that she had a sister that her mother had given up for adoption 47 years prior), she also used the occasion to address her mother, Vernita’s “shame,” about it.
After an on-camera visit with Patricia and their mother, Oprah said that her mother was still “carrying the shame that would have been put upon her in 1963, and therefore, she hasn’t been able to release herself to fully embrace [Patricia] and embrace this miracle that has really happened in our family.”
Oprah petitioned to her mother: “You can let that go. You can let the shame go. There are millions of people all over this country who are just like you, who have given up their children because they knew at the time that they could not provide the best for them. So, Vernita, you can let that go.”
And in 2011, Oprah told Inside Edition that her other sister- also named Pat-sold her out for a $19,000 interview with The National Enquirer.
“My sister sold me out to the tabloids,” Oprah said, detailing her drug-addicted sister’s tabloid tattling. (Pat told the Enquirer that her famous sister had a secret pregnancy at age 14. The baby died soon after birth.)
But even that betrayal had a silver lining.
“My sister Pat going to the tabloids and telling the story about my having the baby, was a gift because it released me from the shame,” Oprah later said.
As for her latest family feud, Oprah may not have to call Barbra Winfrey her stepmom much longer; Vernon Winfrey has filed for divorce.
