Oprah in Adelaide for her show at Entertainment Centre
OPRAH Winfrey proved she was a woman of her word when she kept a promise she made to Adelaide woman Mel Dzelde 13 years ago.
OPRAH Winfrey proved she was a woman of her word this week when she kept a promise she made to Adelaide woman Mel Dzelde 13 years ago.
In Melbourne on Wednesday to attend Winfrey’s first Australian one-woman show, An Evening With Oprah, Ms Dzelde received a message from her idol.
“I had a phone call in the afternoon saying, ‘Miss Winfrey would like to invite you to the soundcheck beforehand and a cocktail party’,” Ms Dzelde said, and the ticket she had bought for the show was also upgraded.
Ms Dzelde, who works for radio station Power FM, first met Winfrey in 2002 at the International Women’s Conference in Detroit, where the billionaire US media mogul was the keynote speaker.
The global superstar — who performs at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre tonight — invited Ms Dzelde to travel to Chicago to spend a day with her at her company Harpo Productions, and told her she would look her up if she visited Australia. At the soundcheck, she recognised the now-blonde Dzelde, a brunette when they last met, telling her: “You’ve changed your hair”.
“We had a lovely catch-up chat ... it was amazing,” Ms Dzelde said. “She spent extra time with us and was really gracious and generous.” She said the show was “fantastic”, adding: “It was very special for Oprah fans ... quite personal and uplifting. Oprah really puts her heart and soul into the show.”
But after landing in Adelaide by private jet on Thursday, Winfrey personally rang The Advertiser’s sister paper, The Herald-Sun in Melbourne, to hit back at negative reviews of her first performance — which veteran entertainment commentator Peter Ford described as a “mixture of mumbo jumbo psychobabble cliches” and “bumper sticker” slogans — even though she said she refused to read them.
“I might just read them on the way home on the plane — they won’t change anything I do on the tour, not a thing,” the TV Queen stressed, saying of the show: “I looked down at the people at the front and they were barely breathing because they were so rapt, so engaged... a wonderful experience.”
The talk-show host turned motivational speaker touched down at Adelaide Airport about 1.45pm yesterday before being whisked off in a convoy of black cars to the InterContinental, casually dressed and with her famous hair blowing in the wind as she stepped on to the tarmac.
Tickets for Friday night’s performance range from $101.85 to $356.72 and are still available
Click here to get an idea of what is likely to happen at the show.