Oprah Winfrey Reveals How She Pulled Off 'Iconic' 'You Get a Car' Giveaway and What She Really Thinks About THAT Meme (Exclusive)

"By the time we gave away the cars, I was already operating with my producers with the philosophy that we do nothing that is not intentional," Winfrey tells PEOPLE

Twenty years later, Oprah Winfrey is breaking down one of her hit daytime talk show’s most famous moments that has since become a timeless meme.

Speaking to PEOPLE for the magazine’s 50th-anniversary special issue, Winfrey, 70, describes the memorable car giveaway moment-by-moment: “That day, I had said to everyone in the audience, ‘Please don’t shake your boxes,’ because I knew that if you shook the boxes, you might be able to feel the keys moving around.”

The cultural icon and media mogul continues, “Everybody opened the boxes at the same time. So you were looking at the person next to you who got theirs, and you're like, ‘Oh, they got it. But I got it too.’ So I was like, ‘You get a car, you get a car, you get a car, everybody gets a car.’ Because people were confused.”

At first, The Color Purple producer intended to give only the first 12 people in the audience a car. However, understanding how access to a vehicle could change someone’s life, Winfrey decided to award the entire crowd with a car, wrapped neatly in a red ribbon.

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“We got to make it meaningful because by the time we gave away the cars, I was already operating with my producers with the philosophy that we do nothing that is not intentional,” she explains.

The iconic segment — which totaled over $7 million — was a one-time classic TV moment, but the internet has immortalized her excitement to store in its archive of reaction images. Social media users have continuously reused a clip of an enthusiastic Winfrey waving her outstretched arms.

On the day of the giveaway, the What I Know for Sure author recalls wanting to wear her red Celine suit despite her best friend Gayle King’s initial disapproval.

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“I was like, 'I'm going to wear the red suit because the red suit matches the red bows.' And that was the best decision. That red suit. It has carried us through a couple of decades now,” Winfrey says.

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King, who pitched the giveaway to Winfrey, detailed to PEOPLE’s Pop Cultured in 2022 how a chance encounter with a Pontiac executive led to the “You get a car!” moment.

“I said, 'I'll take your card and pass it along to her team.' And I couldn't get to the phone fast enough. And then from there, then the question became, how do we execute it?" King, 69, said.

On the day of the reveal, the CBS Mornings host flew in to watch the event unfold, noting that Winfrey “was so excited.”

"That was one of the happiest days of my life," Winfrey said during the 2022 Pop Cultured episode. "It delights me, it makes me so happy, to see other people be happy and to be able to do that. That's one of the great joys of my life."

For more on our 50th Anniversary, check out our special digital issue, and pick up the latest copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands April 12.

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