Twenty years later, Oprah Winfrey has revealed one of the most spectacular moments from her popular daytime talk show, which has become a timeless meme, reported People. Oprah Winfrey, 70, described the memorable car giveaway moment-by-moment, "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."
At first, Oprah Winfrey intended to give only the first 12 people in the audience a car. However, understanding how access to a vehicle could change someone's life, she decided to award the entire crowd with a car.
"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.
The iconic segment - which totalled over 7 million dollars was a one-time classic TV moment but the internet has immortalised her enthusiasm in its library of response photographs. A video showing Winfrey swinging her arms enthusiastically has been repeatedly shared on social media.
On the day of the giveaway, the 'What I Know for Sure' author recalled wanting to wear her red Celine suit despite her best friend Gayle King's initial disapproval.
"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," Oprah Winfrey said.
King, who pitched the giveaway to Winfrey, detailed to People's Pop Cultured in 2022 how a chance encounter with a Pontiac executive led to the "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, 69, said.
On the day of the unveiling, the CBS Mornings presenter travelled in to see the ceremony, remarking that Winfrey "was so excited."
"That was one of the happiest days of my life," Winfrey said 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," reported People.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
