Oprah Winfrey Joins Hoda Kotb Podcast With Friend Maria Shriver

It was the little things that kept them close. For Shriver, it was cups of coffee Oprah was brewing for him.

“It was so emotional for me, because I didn’t – that’s not how I grew up, you know? Nobody brought me a cup of coffee or a cup of water.” , Shriver said. “In a funny way, even though I had a very close relationship with my mom, I wasn’t nurtured, mothered that way, right? And (Oprah) wasn’t mothered. in its own way. But I think, in a way, we mothered each other. “

The two women experienced what Winfrey called “assaults and micro-assaults” early in their careers. Shriver was there in the years before Winfrey “became Oprah”.

“There is sand. There are sleepless nights. There is Nashville. There is Baltimore,” said Shriver. “There’s work upstairs. We shout at it. They say you’re, you know, also this, also that, too whatever.”

Winfrey recalled one of her lowest moments, after starting her own network, a time she called “humiliation for me.”

“Every newspaper, everyone was saying, ‘You should have kept your day job. The OWN in trouble. Why did you quit The Oprah Show? It’s a disaster.’ Just one story, after another story, after another story, ”she said.

“I remember laying my head on the table, Maria, and just sobbing.”

The couple were together when a song came out, “By Thy Grace”, by Snatam Kaur. The two women began to sing.

“And I was like, ‘How do you know this song?’ And she says, ‘How do you know this song?’, Said Shriver, who was parting ways at the time and said the song had helped her.

Shriver started making calls right away and discovered the singer was nearby. She persuaded her to visit him for Winfrey’s birthday, when they sat on the porch to watch the sunset.

The song started playing and Oprah thought it was coming from a speaker. “And then I turn around and Snatam Kaur walks down the porch stairs, because she was on the upstairs balcony. She walks down the porch stairs. And that was the most out of body, surreal – I think the tears literally shot out of my eyes, ”Winfrey said.

She called it a healing experience that helped her think differently about her struggle. (The song is now Hoda’s wake-up song too!)

Shriver also recalled the moment after the death of her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, when Winfrey gathered her close friends at her home and called them Team Maria. Each friend chose a word for Shriver and engraved it on a crystal stone. Winfrey’s word was ‘cherish’.

To Shriver, it meant the world. “Because I don’t feel like in my life I’ve been cherished. Pushed, motivated – you know, all those words, kinda very strong – but not darling.”

Big gestures aside, both women said it’s the little moments, like cups of coffee or a text to check in, that keep them connected.

“I grew up in a big family, in a big life. But when I close my eyes, it’s the little moments,” said Shriver. “It’s you who dines with me. She brings the coffee. It’s a joke. I think we’re all pushed to have these big, big moments. But I think it’s the little moments that the people are not pressured to have, these are really the moments of transformation. “

And the two friends told Hoda that as they get older they feel less compelled to please others. For Winfrey, the best part of aging is having nothing more to prove.

“Whatever you do, you choose to do because it’s going to give you pleasure, meaning, pleasure – fulfill some kind of purpose that you want or desire. But you don’t have to prove anything”, a- she declared. “Nothing to prove because you’ve already proven it.”

Listen to the full conversation on “Making Space with Hoda Kotb,” wherever you get your podcasts.