Oprah Winfrey is known for doling out gifts to her studio audience and that generosity doesn't stop when it comes to her long-lost relatives.
Over the weekend, the former Queen of Daytime posted a picture on Twitter showing she and her half sister Patricia celebrating her birthday just two years after they met for the very first time.
'Hey TweetHearts... celebrating my sister's birthday... missing the tweet party,' Winfrey wrote as the caption for a picture of she and Patricia on Saturday.
The U.S. talk show host said she was ‘shocked to the core’ in November 2010 when she learned that her mother Vernita Lee had another daughter, Patricia, who she had given up for adoption shortly after her birth in 1963.
Celebrate: Over the weekend, the former Queen of Daytime posted a picture on Twitter showing she and her half sister Patricia celebrating her birthday just two years after they met for the very first time
Winfrey, 59, has now met up with her half-sister, whose surname has not been released, and the two have been reunited with their mother for the first time as adults.
Very few details were revealed by the photo, except to show that the two sisters who once had no idea that one another existed have clearly made up for lost time.
Oprah outshone the birthday girl by opting for a bright green embellished top rather than a simple black dress that Patricia chose.
They appeared to be in the private room of a restaurant, with printed menus on each table, but no other clues about their location were revealed.
Their personal history began nearly half a century ago, when Oprah's mother Vernita Lee put the child up for adoption because she wanted to get off welfare and knew that if she had another child it might not be possible.
Secret sibling: Oprah Winfrey has revealed she has a younger half-sister, Patricia, on her chat show today
Winfrey said that at the time she was eight and living with her father, and did not even know her mother was pregnant.
She revealed the news on her talk show on her U.S. TV network, OWN. Winfrey told how Patricia had been trying to identify her mother for years until she saw Miss Lee in a TV interview mention details that coincided with what she knew of her birth family.
Patricia got in touch with her half-sister at her production company in Chicago, which led to Winfrey confronting her mother who confessed all.
DNA tests also confirmed that Patricia was an 85 per cent match to Winfrey’s niece, the daughter of the first Winfrey sister, also named Patricia, who died in 2003.
Single mother: Patricia worked two jobs to support her family
Family tree: Oprah's mother Vernita had three other child, Pat and Jeffrey, both deceased, and Patricia, who was given up for adoption weeks after her birth
The revelation is the latest in the saga of Winfrey’s complicated and fraught life story, which has included childhood abuse and teenage pregnancy.
After more than two decades on TV, Winfrey is now one of the most successful women in the world with a fortune estimated at $2.7billion.
The now-49-year-old Patricia, who is the single mother of two living in Milwaukee, is nine years younger than her multi-millionaire half sister.
Winfrey said on her show she was nine-years-old and living with her father when her mother had the daughter and gave her up for adoption.
Winfrey said on first meeting her half sister she was struck by her resemblance to her sister, also called Patricia.
'You look just like Pat,' Winfrey screamed, upon meeting her half-sister for the first time.
'We spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know each other,' Winfrey said.
Pat died in 2003, her death thought to be related to her years of drug use. Winfrey said that her new sister, who shared Pat's name, reminded her of what her other sister might have been.
Oprah's parents: The chat show host with her father Vernon and mother Vernita in 1994
Winfrey had promised a bombshell revelation that had shaken her 'to the core'.
She said: 'Imagine my shock just a few months ago, at the end of October, when I found out I have another sister living just 90 minutes away.
'For the most part, my life has been an open book and on the show I think I've seen about everything.
'And I thought nothing could surprise me anymore, but let me tell you I was wrong.'
'It was one of the greatest surprises of my life,' said Winfrey. 'It left me speechless.'
Winfrey said she felt impressed that her sister had hidden for three years the fact that she was related to Oprah, for fear of hurting the star's reputation.
She told Patricia: 'I had to meet you because I wanted to meet somebody who had that kind of character. So thank you. Thank you.'
Over the years she has shared many of her deepest personal secrets with her fans.
These included details of her abusive childhood to drug abuse. She also admitted that she had given birth as a teenager to a son who died soon after birth.