On TV show, Oprah reveals she has half-sister

Telling her mother that, "You can let the shame go . . . You can let that go," Oprah Winfrey revealed on her talk-show Monday that she has been reunited with a previously unknown half-sister whom their mother gave up for adoption in 1963.

Calling it "a family secret I've been keeping for months," a visibly emotional Winfrey, whose program has reunited many families with lost relatives throughout its nearly 25 years, introduced a Milwaukee woman named Patricia as "my half-sister, who I never knew existed." Winfrey learned the news shortly before Thanksgiving. DNA tests confirmed the two are siblings.

Patricia, whose last name was not given, was born when Winfrey was 9 years old and living with her father in Nashville. Winfrey was unaware her mother was pregnant.

Patricia had discovered the relationship in 2007, but, said Winfrey, "never once thought to sell the story," even while unable to contact Winfrey or Winfrey's relatives.

"Family business should be handled by family," Patricia told Winfrey on the show. "It couldn't be handled by anyone else. That's not fair. It wouldn't be fair to you."

Patricia had searched unsuccessfully for her birth mother many years ago, and tried again more recently at the behest of her two adult children, son Andre and daughter Aquarius, who also appeared on "Oprah" Monday. The adoption agency had told her that her mother did not want to meet her, though Vernita Lee, her and Winfrey's mother, said in a taped segment that she was "so shocked" to learn Patricia had been looking for her.

"I made the decision to give her up because I wasn't able to take care of her," explained Lee, who also lives in Milwaukee and recently suffered a minor stroke.

Remarkably, the same day that Patricia heard this from the adoption agency, she saw a local-news story about Lee, who had two daughters and a son, with only the older daughter still alive. The details matched what Patricia knew of her own background.

Winfrey called her first meeting with her newly found half-sister "a beloved moment."