Entertainment

Oprah’s final guest: herself

CHICAGO — It ended with the ugly cry.

Oprah Winfrey taped her final show — number 4,561 — today with Oprah as her one and only guest.

Several celebrity friends, including Maria Shriver, filmmaker Tyler Perrry, Gayle King, Stedman Graham and Oprah’s fourth-grade teacher sat down front, but Oprah did all the talking on the 60-minute show that marked the end of 25 years on afternoon TV.

“She talked about her upbringing, and that it’s a miracle that she became the person she became,” said Tammy Brownlee, 31, one of the 404 fans who scored a golden ticket to the finale.

Speaking from a bare set — just one chair and a side table with a glass of water — Oprah touched on all the themes that made her famous — paying attention to your dreams and mustering the courage to change your life.

The audience was made up of people who had been trying for several years but had never been to see an “Oprah Winfrey Show” before.

“No gifts, no prizes, just gratitude,” said Susi Spang, 47, from Lacrosse, Wis. as she left the studio.

“She was crying, everyone was crying,” said Keena Moffett, 26, a Chicago fan, who said Oprah was more religious than she had ever heard her before,

“Usually, she is PC about it,”said Moffett. But today, “she was very emotional.”

Dressed in a coral dress with matching sash, the talk-show queen stood throughout the farewell show, introducing clips from her favorite past shows, pacing the empty stage and talking to her core audience.

She talked most emotionally about the victims of abuse — including own experience with sexual abuse while growing up.

The interview she did last year with Johanna Orozco, an Ohio who, in 2007, was shot in the face by her ex-boyfriend, was a wake-up call for her, Oprah said.

The interview had “taught her. ‘Listen to your internal whispers before you get a shotgun in the face,’¤” she told the audience.

Her final words were: “This is not going to be goodbye. This is the closing of one chapter and the opening of a new one,” referring to her new cable channel, OWN, which began last January.

Now that her daily show is done, the talk show says intends to work full time now on getting the struggling channel off the ground — though she herself will be appearing only a few times a week.

The finale airs tomorrow around the country (at 4 p.m. in New York on Ch. 7).

After the taping was over, Winfrey retired to her spacious office for a party with staff members and some invited friends, said a spokesman for the show.