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Publication Date: Friday, March 09, 2001

Meeting Oprah: 'It was a complete fairytale'

Cinderella. That's what Kathy Cordova of Pleasanton felt like when she was whisked away to Chicago two weeks ago to be on TV and to have lunch with her heroine Oprah Winfrey and her favorite author Joyce Carol Oates.

"I would have died to meet either one of them," Cordova said.

She had written a letter about Oprah's monthly book club selection, Oates' "We Were the Mulvaneys," and was chosen to appear on the show for a discussion of the book and to have lunch with Oprah and the author.

Cordova said that because she is turning 40 this year, she set some goals for herself and one was to meet Oprah. "I admire what she's done with her program, how much she's given to charity, what kind of person she is," said Cordova.

She logged on to Oprah's web site, www.oprah.com, thinking that one way to meet her would be to go on the show "with problems of my husband and children and spill my guts on national TV."

Once on the web site, inspiration struck. Oprah's latest book selection was one of Cordova's all-time favorites, and there was still time to send in a letter sharing her thoughts on the book.

"This would be the ideal way to meet her," Cordova recalled thinking. "I could meet her and have a meal with her and not reveal any embarrassing stuff about myself. I didn't care about being on TV, I just wanted to meet her."

She'd loaned her hardback copy of "We Were the Mulvaneys" to her mother-in-law so she hurried out to buy another one. Cordova has two children, Savannah, 5, and Carson, 2, and said, "For me even to find time to read a book with two little kids is just about impossible." But she made it a priority. She researched her subject, too (something she'd learned from being in sales for 10 years), analyzing letters from readers chosen in the past.

"I wrote the letter, partially while the kids were in the bath Saturday night," she recalled. She e-mailed it off, Monday was a holiday, and Tuesday morning someone on Oprah's staff called.

"We get thousands of letters," said publicist Audrey Pass. "A staff of people reviews the letters. They select those that interest them, call and ask more questions, and then they may or may not be invited to be on the show."

Staff members talked to Cordova several times, asking how the book moved her and her opinions on the book's characters, before finally calling at 3:30 p.m. the next Monday to arrange for her appearance.

Wednesday morning she was off. "It was first class the whole way," she said. "They picked me up in a limo at the airport, put me in a suite at the hotel. I was treated like royalty. Her staff is fabulous."

The next morning she recognized the four other readers in front of the hotel by the books they were carrying. "We all hopped into the limo together and started talking," she said. By 9 a.m. they were in the studio, having their hair and makeup freshened, and getting details from the publicist. Then they took their seats.

"Oprah and Joyce Carol Oates came out and we talked about the book. We just started talking, it happened so seamlessly, and before we knew it an hour and 15 minutes was up." Afterward they sat down to a lunch served on the set.

Cordova said Oprah was "smart." "She is not where she is by any mistake. She's smart, charismatic, a polished professional. She is just really amazing," she said. "And she is very personable, really easy to talk to. We talked about everything - the book, authors, politics, our personal experiences."

"Oates is exactly how I pictured her," Cordova continued. "She's very small, a size 4 petite - Oprah looked at the tag on the back of her dress. She's very soft-spoken. Never in a million years would you guess she writes things that are so emotionally complex. She was very easy to talk to, but a little more reserved than Oprah."

She also noted, "Oates was interested in what we thought about the characters' motivations. She said it was great to hear different people's perspectives."

Cordova herself is a writer, although she never pursued it when she was younger because she deemed it "impractical." But last spring she took a writing class through Pleasanton Parks and Community Services, and in January she formed a writers group that meets at Borders once a month. "And my wonderful, fabulous husband Jeff gave me a new laptop for Christmas so if the kids are entertained for five minutes I can run over and write."

The highlight of the Oprah experience, Cordova said, was when she arrived at the airport and checked out Oates' inscription in the leather-bound copy of "We Were the Mulvaneys" they gave her. It read: "For Kathy Cordova, What a beautiful, eloquent, heart-rending letter you've written. Thank you."

"This author that I worship thought something I wrote was 'beautiful, eloquent and heart-rending'! I thought that was amazing," Cordova said. She quietly checked out another woman's inscription to make sure hers was unique.

The show was scheduled to air yesterday and Cordova was curious about how she would look, especially after having her hair and makeup "touched up," although she didn't really care. "I just wanted to go there and have a good time. I wanted to have fun and not be obsessive, although once I looked at the TV screen and thought, 'Ooh, is that me?'"

She said the experience was "a complete fairytale." Then...

"After lunch they said, 'OK, time to go, your limo's waiting.'" It was a quick trip to the airport and home, Cordova said. The next morning at 7 a.m., "Cinderella" was home doing laundry. But she still has the inscribed leather-bound book and a tape of her dream come true. <@$p>
For a transcript of the Oprah Winfrey show, telephone Burrelle's at 800-777-8398.
Kathy Cordova read the following segment from her letter in the taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show: "The Mulvaneys were so real! I laughed, I cried, and sometimes I wanted to jump into the story and shake those Mulvaneys, just as I often want to shake certain members of my own family! But, as the Mulvaneys were incapable of helping each other, I'm mostly powerless to affect my family members any more than I can influence the characters in a book. Ultimately, It's up to each of us to find our own way - to muck through our childhood injuries and society's expectations and opinions of us, to release our anger, to forgive - and to come out of the journey as our own person."