Oprah Winfrey, at the age of 70, has revisited one of the most iconic moments from her renowned daytime talk show, a moment that has since become a timeless meme, as reported by People.
Winfrey shared the exhilarating experience of the memorable car giveaway moment, recounting, “That day, I had said to everyone in the audience, ‘Please don’t shake your boxes,’ because I knew that if you shook the boxes, you might be able to feel the keys moving around.” She continued, “Everybody opened the boxes at the same time. So you were looking at the person next to you who got theirs, and you’re like, ‘Oh, they got it. But I got it too.’ So I was like, ‘You get a car, you get a car, you get a car, everybody gets a car.’ Because people were confused.”
Initially intending to gift only the first 12 individuals in the audience with cars, Winfrey’s understanding of the transformative impact of access to a vehicle prompted her to surprise the entire crowd with car keys. “We got to make it meaningful because, by the time we gave away the cars, I was already operating with my producers with the philosophy that we do nothing that is not intentional,” she explained.
While the moment, totaling over 7 million dollars, remains a one-time classic TV highlight, Winfrey’s infectious enthusiasm has been immortalized on the internet through a plethora of response photographs. A video capturing Winfrey’s jubilant arm-swinging has been widely circulated on social media platforms.
Reflecting on the day of the giveaway, Winfrey recalled her decision to wear a red Celine suit, despite initial reservations from her close friend Gayle King. “I was like, ‘I’m going to wear the red suit because the red suit matches the red bows.’ And that was the best decision. That red suit. It has carried us through a couple of decades now,” Winfrey remarked.
King, who initially proposed the giveaway idea to Winfrey, recounted to People’s Pop Cultured in 2022 how a chance encounter with a Pontiac executive led to the iconic “You get a car!” moment. “I said, ‘I’ll take your card and pass it along to her team.’ And I couldn’t get to the phone fast enough. And then from there, then the question became, how do we execute it?” King explained.
On the day of the unveiling, King joined the ceremony and observed Winfrey’s infectious excitement. “That was one of the happiest days of my life,” Winfrey expressed during the 2022 Pop Cultured episode. “It delights me, it makes me so happy, to see other people be happy and to be able to do that. That’s one of the great joys of my life,” as reported by People.