There are few accomplishments Oprah Winfrey hasn’t achieved in her 72 years, but the entertainment icon’s latest honor may be the one she’s proudest of. In April 2026, Forbes released its first-ever rankings of the top 250 Self-Made Americans, in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary, and Winfrey tops the list.
In a video posted on April 12, Winfrey got choked up sharing the news with a studio audience before filming her latest “Oprah Podcast” and described why her ranking on that prestigious list means so much to her.
Oprah Winfrey Has Gone From No Indoor Plumbing to a $3.2 Billion Net Worth
Winfrey has amassed a fortune — estimated by Forbes to be worth $3.2 billion — by building her media empire over the last five decades, from hosting her legendary daytime talk show to producing the 2024 remake of “The Color Purple.” In Forbes’ description of Winfrey’s background, the outlet noted that she was “born to a teen mother” and grew up “on a rural Mississippi farm without indoor plumbing.”
Forbes’ background on Winfrey continued, “At nine, she was raped by a cousin; at 14 she gave birth to a son, who died soon thereafter. Thanks to a federal program, she attended a rich suburban school where she discovered a knack for public speaking and debate, which earned her a part-time radio gig and, later, a scholarship to Tennessee State University. In 1984, she took over a struggling morning talk show in Chicago and eventually turned it into a national media brand.”
As Winfrey shared her Forbes ranking with the small audience gathered for the recording of her next podcast, she did a little happy dance and beamed, “One of the ways they measured it is the distance that you come — from where you were to where you are.”
“And this makes me want to cry,” Winfrey said, getting choked up, “’cause it’s such a long way from Kosciusko-dirt-road-Mississippi. Born to a teen mother, (facing) racism, misogynism, sexism, all of that stuff.”
Oprah Winfrey Says She Never Doubted She’d Be Successful, Which is Why She Thinks She’s Achieved So Much
GettyAbout to tape a show about the power of positive beliefs, Winfrey told the crowd, “That’s why this show is so important. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be successful. And the reason it never occurred to me is because of what we’re talking about today — your beliefs.”
Winfrey recalled being a “little girl in rural Mississippi on my grandmother’s back porch,” watching her “hanging out the clothes on the line, because she was a domestic worker, and would bring the sheets home to boil them in the big black pot because we didn’t have washing machines. And she said, ‘Oprah Gail, you better watch me because one day you’re gonna have to do this for yourself.'”
Laughing, Oprah joked that she knew way back then “that the Forbes list was coming!” Winfrey then acknowledged she didn’t actually know what Forbes was when she was a girl, but that “I could feel inside myself that I am not going to be hanging clothes on a line and boiling them in a pot, because I believed that I was God’s child.”
Winfrey concluded her impromptu inspirational speech by sharing, “I know this for sure: You do not become what you wish for. You do not become what you want. You do not become even what you aspire to. You become exactly what you believe is possible.”
