Inside Oprah Winfrey’s Private Relationship With “Rock” Stedman Graham

It’s not that Winfrey and Stedman were silent (or were silenced) about their relationship. It’s just that they’d prefer to keep their bond not be for media consumption.

“It’s also why I stopped making as many public appearances with Stedman,” The Color Purple star told Gwyneth Paltrow on The Goop Podcast in 2018, “because I realized that every time there’s a new photograph, there’s a new story.”

And there have been quite a few of them over the years—with Winfrey and Graham facing rumors about everything from breakup and marriages to her longtime bond with just best friend Gayle King.

But if you want to know the real story about Winfrey and Graham, you have to go back to 1986—the year both their relationship and The Oprah Winfrey Show began.

“I had seen a particular man around town, but he was always with the same girlfriend, so I didn’t pay much attention,” she wrote in 2020 for O, The Oprah Magazine. “One day, though, we were both visiting a mutual friend who was ill and later died of AIDS. The guy with the girlfriend had come to the friend’s home alone, and so had I. We left together, and I asked if he wanted to get a beer. (Yes, I drank a lot of beer then and wore cowboy boots every day.) He said he didn’t drink. (Still doesn’t—not one sip of nothin’ alcoholic since I’ve known him.)”

While Winfrey recalled thinking Graham was nice, polite and “actually too handsome,” she “proceeded with caution, even with a friendship.”

“It wasn’t until months later, when I learned he’d broken up with his girlfriend and had been inquiring about my dating status,” the 72-year-old continued, “that I gave him a serious thought.”

And he turned out to be her perfect match.

“Anyone who’s ever met him is always amazed by what a genuine gentleman he is,” she added. “He’s so positive. Wants the best for me and everyone he knows. Truly wishes people well. Doesn’t curse. (I’ve been known to.) Never have I heard him gossip or say a negative thing about anyone. (I have, plenty of times.). He’s appropriately named because he’s steady as a mountain. Even-tempered, accountable, trustworthy, patient.”

Graham and Winfrey got engaged in 1992 but ultimately decided on a “spiritual union.” He was married previously and he and his ex-wife have a daughter, Wendy Graham.

And while Graham is OK with Winfrey’s nicknames for him—including “Honey Graham,” “Steddy” and her “rock”—he was initially less enthused about the title the public game him.

“They used to call me Oprah’s boyfriend,” the 75-year-old told The New York Times in 1997, adding wryly, “Some people call me Stedman now.”

After all, Graham has built his own successful career as a best-selling author, motivational speaker and CEO of the management and marking firm S. Graham and Associates. So, there’s just no reason for him to be jealous of Winfrey’s fame.

“We have what a lot of people have who are in a relationship,” he said in 2011 when he made a rare appearance on the set of Oprah, “and we’ve been in the relationship a long time. We want each other to succeed. And, you know, I want her to succeed and be as successful as she possibly can. So I encourage that. That’s not always an easy thing to do,” he admitted, “when you’re the man in a relationship with a very powerful woman.”

“And so I’m not threatened by her fame, or her success, or her money, or all of that,” he continued. “So, that’s who she is. It doesn’t have anything to do with how I define myself.”

Ultimately no powerful person is an island, or can remain an island for the long run, and whatever Graham is bringing to the table has helped make for the satisfying private life that in turn has helped Winfrey flourish in her public life.

“Stedman, you’re the sweetest man, with the greatest integrity,” Winfrey said while accepting her honorary Oscar in 1998. “Thank you for helping me to be everything that I am, and all that is to come.”

And Stedman has been there for almost as long as the world has been getting to know Winfrey on a national, and then international, scale. He’s supported her in all shapes and forms, quite literally.

Among the rumors they’ve faced down as a couple was when in 1988 came the speculation that she was crash-dieting to please Graham.

“I love Stedman very much,” Winfrey—whose weight-loss journey has made headlines for decades—said on her Nov. 15, 1988, show, the episode where she wheeled out the wagon full of fat and shared she’d lost 67 pounds. “And he cares about me and has been very supportive of me, fat and thin. I did not do this for Stedman…You know you cannot do it [lose weight] for anybody but yourself.”

Graham only attended three tapings of The Oprah Winfrey Show over the course of its 25-year run, including her final “Favorite Things” episode before Winfrey’s show went off the air in May 2011.

“You know it’s big if Stedman’s here,” Winfrey joked in a clip showing the behind-the-scenes lead-up to that episode. “I knew that second [to last] show was gonna be tough for you and I wanted to just kinda…get you through it,” he offered, as she added that he was there to “give me strength.”

Graham also gives Winfrey her space, which she considers an essential part of any strong relationship.

“I happen to be with a man who has always appreciated the fact that I was…considered a powerful person,” she told E! News in 2008. “[He’s] not trying to crowd in on it, not competing with it. He knows how to hold his own.”

And while Winfrey and Graham understand the interest around their relationship, they’re keeping it their own.

“I think people are fascinated with the relationship because people haven’t seen him,” she said in the behind-the-scenes clip ahead of her final show. “And, you know, want to know, what is it? Is it real? What is the relationship really like? What are y’all like together? And when you see us, it’s really quite normal.”

To see more couples who’ve been together for decades, keep reading.

A version of this story was originally published Jan. 10, 2018 at 6:12 p.m. PST.