Inside Ellen DeGeneres' Relationship With Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres are two of the most well-known talk show hosts of all time. Each helmed their own self-titled, Emmy award-winning daytime chat fest: "The Oprah Winfrey Show" ran from 1986 to 2011, while "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" aired from 2003 to 2022.

When DeGeneres ended her show after 19 seasons in May 2022, she found support in Winfrey, who appeared as one of her last guests during a star-studded finale week. As DeGeneres prepared to wrap her show, she and Winfrey shared a moment that few people can relate to. More than a decade after ending her own show, Winfrey revealed that she became emotional while waiting backstage with DeGeneres' staff. "I know what this feels like with only a couple of days left," Winfrey said, per CNN.

She also admitted that seeing DeGeneres' final days on her talk show reminded her of how a talk show's crew becomes like family. "That's what happens with a show like this, where families come together, and relationships are built. It becomes home for, you know, hundreds of people who are all supporting you and helping you be as great as you are," Winfrey told DeGeneres. But Winfrey and DeGeneres' bond was formed well before that emotional day in 2022.

Ellen DeGeneres' friendship with Oprah Winfrey dates back decades. In 1997, DeGeneres starred in the ABC sitcom, "Ellen." The show also served as a vehicle for her own coming out story with the famous "The Puppy Episode," which made history as the first time a lead television character came out as a lesbian, according to ET. Winfrey — who at the time was at the height of her talk show heyday — appeared as a guest star in the episode, playing a therapist as DeGeneres' character, Ellen Morgan, admitted she was gay for the first time. Executive producer Dava Savel told Vanity Fair that Winfrey became very emotional as she replayed the scenes after filming. "She started to cry," Savel said of Winfrey. "The tears just flowed down her cheeks, and she said, 'I'm so proud to be a part of this. I'm so proud.'"

Twenty years later, Winfrey reunited with DeGeneres to discuss the fallout from the groundbreaking episode. Winfrey revealed that she received hate mail after appearing in "The Puppy Episode," but she had no regrets. "I just said yes, because I so believed in your truth, and I so wanted to support you," she said on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2017.

More than a decade after "The Puppy Episode" aired, Ellen DeGeneres, thick in the middle of her talk show run, petitioned to be a rare cover girl for Winfrey's O Magazine. In an essay for O Magazine, Winfrey revealed that during DeGeneres' 1,000th show milestone, she surprised her on a video chat with an invitation to appear on the magazine cover alongside her. Only First Lady Michelle Obama had ever been given the honor before. The two women posed for four covers for the holiday issue of O.

In an interview with Winfrey, DeGeneres admitted that while she did everything to get her attention, she never thought the media mogul would actually go for having her on her magazine's cover. "I didn't think it was going to happen!" she said. "No one had ever been on the cover with you, so I really thought it was just a joke." At the time, Oprah told fans that DeGeneres knew how to get things done. "For only the second time in O history, this December, I'm sharing the cover with a woman I adore," she said.

DeGeneres returned the compliment more than 10 years later during an interview with Winfrey. "I love you so much, Oprah," she said, per the Los Angeles Times. "I am, as I say all the time, I am so honored to call you a friend. You are the wisest person I know and I just adore you."