We’ve come to know Stedman Graham primarily as longtime partner of media and business mogul Oprah Winfrey, but who is the queen of talk show’s “rock,” really?
The 66-year-old holds many titles: educator, author, motivational speaker and businessman (CEO at that), not to mention a dad and grandpa, among other things. Though he keeps a considerably low profile and is usually out of the spotlight, following Sunday’s Golden Globes, he shared a pretty confident opinion about the possibility of Oprah running for president in the future. And we figured, who could know Winfrey better than her beau of 32 years?
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Below, we’ve rounded up eight things to know about the man in Oprah’s life.
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1. He’s a New York Times best-selling author.
Stedman is an accomplished writer, having published 11 self-help, motivational and business books, including two New York Times best-sellers, between 1995 and 2012.
2. He’s a father and a grandfather.
Graham has a 42-year-old daughter, Wendy, from his previous marriage, who welcomed a baby girl in June 2015.
3. He’s basketball-athlete height.
The New Jersey native stands at a towering 6-foot-7. He was a star player of his high school basketball team and even went on to play in college.
4. He & Oprah met in 1986 and have been together ever since.
The two met at a charity event in Chicago and started dating that same year — the rest is history!
5. The duo was engaged in 1992 but decided against marriage for a “spiritual union” instead.
Since then, they both have maintained that they don’t want to be married. “The only time I brought it up was when I said to Stedman, ‘What would have happened if we had actually gotten married?’ And the answer is: ‘We wouldn’t be together,’” Winfrey told Vogue. “We would not have stayed together, because marriage requires a different way of being in this world. His interpretation of what it means to be a husband and what it would mean for me to be a wife would have been pretty traditional, and I would not have been able to fit into that.”
6. He’s been encouraging Oprah to run for president for years.
We now know that Winfrey may really be considering running for president, thanks to a Los Angeles Times report and a reassuring comment by Stedman, noting that “she would absolutely do it.” But this isn’t the first time he’s nudged her to enter the political scene. Graham apparently has been encouraging his high-profile partner for years and is certain she’d be a great candidate.
7. He has a degree in social work.
Graham graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, with a degree in social work and went on to build a career in public relations, specializing in racial activism. He has established an esteemed list of clients over the years, including Winnie Mandela and the late Maya Angelou.
8. He runs his own Chicago-based management & consulting firm.
Of which he is the CEO, obviously. He also founded the Leadership Institute of Chicago and Athletes Against Drugs. In “They Used to Call Me Oprah’s Boyfriend,” a 1997 New York Times profile, he expressed his frustration with the world knowing him only as “Mr. Oprah.” The founder, president and chief operating officer of S. Graham & Associates — sports management, marketing and consulting firm — said, “People didn’t know anything about what I do or what I’m involved in. I’m stepping out.”