By Shinan Govani
tHE COMMERCIALS began papering the TV-sphere early in the New Year – a time of new beginnings and reanimated diets. Oprah Winfrey, up close and soulful, stared right into the camera and solemnly declared, “I. Love. Bread.”
Then, in case you missed it, she said it again, with all the certitude of Ronald Reagan telling Gorbachev, “Tear down this wall!” Oprah loved bread, and she didn’t care who knew about it.
You get a loaf! You get a loaf! And you get a loaf! At the behest of Weight Watchers (which she had purchased a $43 million stake in), she was letting it be known that she sought to lose weight without sacrificing any crumbs, shining a shard of light on a world gone gluten-spooked. And, yet, for veteran Oprah-watchers, it was also something else: in addition to it being an echo of a long-ingrained narrative (who can forget her wheeling out a wagon of fat on her show?), the public avowing of bread only helped to underscore the lengths to which the media Titaness has gone on to keep it unofficial with her long-time beau, Stedman Graham.
2016: a year that marks the threedecade mark of Winfrey and her man, Graham – central-casting handsome yet limelight shy. Thirty years of non-wedded bliss, though one that she’s described as a “spiritual union.” Thirty years making like dog-like years, indeed – considering that, in celebrity relationship-metrics, this is a time span that howls back to an era before Brad Pitt and Gwyneth, let alone Brad and Jen, or Brad and Ang. (Indeed, the relationship even wound up outlasting Oprah’s show!)
The course of love never did run ... same. But in a time when many still see tying the knot as the default, these two have joined a medley of couples, celebrity or otherwise, bucking tradition. In a time where marriage is still looked upon by many as the crescendo of a symphony, Oprah and Stedman have simply chosen to rewrite the score.
Having toyed with marriage and actually been engaged at one point in the ’90s – the wedding was called off – the couple, who first met at a charity event in Chicago in 1986, have, of course, endured all the sniping and the specu-