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Oprah Winfrey

USA TODAY Archive: Oprah's $7M car giveaway stuns TV audience

Ann Oldenburg
USA TODAY

This story originally published on July 14, 2004. It is being republished as part of the commemoration of USA TODAY's 40th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2022.

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey sits atop a Pontiac G6 outside her Chicago studios Monday, Sept. 13, 2004, surrounded by some of the 276 people from her audience who each received one of the new cars at the start of the show to celebrate the premier of her 19th season.  Winfrey said the audience members were particularly chosen because their friends or loved ones had told the show about their need for a new car.

CHICAGO — Oprah Winfrey could just sit back. Relax. Count her millions. Jet between her many fabulous homes. Go yachting whenever she feels like it.

But instead, the 50-year-old icon is starting her 19th season on daytime talk TV. And on Monday's premiere of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," she kicked it off with an Oprah-sized stunt: