Oprah: Barbara Walters Is Partly Why I'm Childless

After seeing Walters' 'complex' relationship with daughter, Winfrey declined to have her own
Posted Jun 14, 2025 7:00 AM CDT
Oprah: Barbara Walters Is Partly Why I'm Childless
In this May 12, 2006, file photo, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, right, joins Barbara Walters at ABC Studios in New York.   (AP Photo/ABC, Steve Fenn, file)

A new documentary on Barbara Walters starts streaming on Hulu on June 23, but some revelations have leaked in advance—including a confession by Oprah Winfrey about the woman she calls her mentor. Appearing in Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, Winfrey, 71, notes that the late TV journalist had a "complex" and "charged" relationship with her only child, Jacqueline Guber, whom she adopted with her second husband, Lee Guber, after she'd suffered a series of miscarriages, per People. That's "one of the reasons why I never had children," Winfrey says.

"I remember her telling me once that there's nothing more fulfilling than having children, and 'You should really think about it,'" Winfrey continues. "And I was like, 'OK, but I'm looking at you, so no.'" She goes on to say that her own career ambitions made her realize she might not be destined to go the motherhood route, noting, per Today: "You are a pioneer in your field, and you are trying to break the mold for yourself and for women who are going to follow you, then something is going to have to give for that. ... And that is why I did not have children. I knew I could not do both well. Both are sacrifices."

USA Today details some of the other nuggets that emerge in the documentary, including the "simmering tension" between Walters and fellow journalist Diane Sawyer, some of her more controversial interview questions, and her love life—she was married four times, including twice to TV producer Merv Adelson. In a clip in the documentary, Walters admits she wasn't "very good at marriage. It may be that my career was just too important, or it may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to, and I wasn't willing, perhaps, to give that much." (More Oprah Winfrey stories.)

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