Oprah's Half-Sister Now Must Pass the 'Gayle Test'

It can't be easy finding out that your long lost sister is Oprah Winfrey and then appearing on her show in front of millions. However, that is easy as pie compared to meeting the TV queen's longtime best friend Gayle King. "I can't wait to meet Patricia," she told ABC.

"Gayle must have mixed feelings about the arrival of Patricia," an insider tells me. "Of course she wants nothing but the best for Oprah, but there has to be just a little tiny part of Gayle that is asking, 'What now?'"

Oprah announced she had a half-sister a few days ago, but already her fans, and Gayle, are chattering about what role Patricia will play in the star's life.

"Gayle is very protective about her relationship with Oprah and is not used to sharing her with anyone," a friend of Gayle's tells me, adding that the new addition to the family could be a "bigger adjustment" for Gayle than for Oprah.

But as Gayle has already said, Patricia has proved she's an amazing person.

"This is extraordinary that somebody would have this information about Oprah, who as you know has been sold out on many occasions by friends, by co-workers, in some cases family," Gayle said. "Patricia wasn't trying to get Oprah, she was trying to find her mother ... having Oprah as a sister, a half-sister, was a bonus."

This could be a tough adjustment for you, Gayle, but don't worry love -- there is enough room in the great O's heart for both of you.

Oprah's New Half-Sister Turned Down Tabloid Cash

Oprah Winfrey stunned viewers on Monday with news that she recently discovered a half-sister she never knew about, but that's only part of the amazing story. Now it turns out that the talk-show queen's sibling, Patricia, cared so much about her sister's privacy and reputation that she turned down a blockbuster offer from a tabloid magazine to expose the truth.

"All Patricia wanted was the truth," an insider tells me. "She wasn't interested in selling her story even for a million dollars. She just wanted to know who she was, where she came from and if she had any brothers or sisters. She had no idea when she started this search she would end up being Oprah Winfrey's half-sister."

Oprah Winfrey promised to reveal a huge family secret on her show, and she didn't disappoint. The queen of all media introduced Patricia in an emotional and jaw-dropping hour of television. Patricia and Oprah share a mother, Vernita Lee, who had kept her pregnancy with her third daughter a secret all these years after giving up Patricia for adoption when Oprah was only 9 years old.

Confusingly, Oprah's other half-sister, who died in 2003, was also named Patricia, but her mom said she did not name the daughter she gave away.

Resourceful Patricia started the process of finding out her family history after seeing her then-unknown mother in a TV interview detailing facts that Patricia knew matched her birth mother. A DNA test finally confirmed Patricia was in fact Oprah's half-sister. This was in 2007. Since then, Patricia tried and tried to contact Oprah, but being the highly private person she is, this proved difficult until November of last year. They met, fittingly, on Thanksgiving Day.

"No one knows what the future holds for the family. Patricia doesn't want a dime from Oprah and certainly wasn't going to take money from a tabloid whose offers are now pouring in," an insider tells me.

And what really would an interview with Oprah's half-sister be worth? "The starting point would be 1 million," one influential tabloid editor tells me.

Patricia, you did the right thing. Who needs a million when you have the golden goose?

Oprah Winfrey Reveals Surprise Half-Sister

Oprah Winfrey's big family secret? The talk-show queen announced on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' Monday that she has discovered a half-sister, named Patricia, who was secretly given up for adoption in 1963. Patricia, who lives in Milwaukee, said that she discovered Oprah was her half-sister while searching for her birth mother in 2007. She spent the next three years trying to contact Winfrey with the news and finally reached her late last year. They met on Thanksgiving Day.

Winfrey was 9 and living with her father, Vernon Winfrey, in 1963 and said she had no idea her mother, Vernita Lee, was even pregnant. According to Winfrey, her mother could not afford to keep Patricia.

In a confusing twist, Winfrey's previously known half-sister, who passed away in 2003, was also named Patricia and lived in Milwaukee. Oprah said that her mom did not name the daughter she gave away and that it was just a coincidence.

Patricia is believed to be 48 and has two adult children, a son and a daughter, meaning Winfrey has a niece and nephew to add to the family as well. Patricia said that she continued her quest to contact Winfrey so her children could know their aunt.

Winfrey praised her half-sister for not going to the press with the story.

It's been a revelatory year for Oprah Winfrey, who, as her legendary talk show winds down its 25th and final year on the air, has stepped out of her comfort zone to address a number of rumors about herself, including talk that her friendship with Gayle King is actually a romantic relationship and her thoughts of suicide as a teenager after she learned of an unwanted pregnancy.

"I was given some news that literally shook me to my core. This time, I'm the one being reunited," Winfrey said in advertisements for today's episode of 'Oprah.' "I was keeping a family secret for months, and on Monday you're going to hear it straight from me."

Earlier Monday, BlackVoices.com reported that Winfrey learned sometime around Thanksgiving of last year that her mother had another daughter. Winfrey, 56, believed for years that she was her parents' only surviving child after her two younger siblings, Jeffrey and Patricia, passed away.

As soon as Winfrey announced that she would reveal "news that literally shook me to my core" about "a family secret," the Internet lit up with speculation. "There has been speculation in the past that Vernon Winfrey is not her biological father," In Touch Weekly Senior Editor Amy Palmer told CBS News, "so this is something people are saying it could be."

Others -- including Kitty Kelley, who famously wrote an unauthorized biography of Winfrey last year -- had been correctly claiming that Winfrey would reveal a long-lost family member.