It’s got to be one of the better perks of the job.
Last week, Mayor Lori Lightfoot had dinner with media titan Oprah Winfrey.
So how was it?
“It was great,” Lightfoot not surprisingly said. “She’s a remarkable person.”
Lightfoot and her wife, Chicago first lady Amy Eshleman, joined the media mogul last Thursday for dinner during a trip Lightfoot took to California to headline a fundraiser for former Sen. Barbara Boxer’s PAC.
Winfrey shared the news on her Instagram post.
“Look who came to dinner,” Oprah’s caption read. “@chicagosmayor and wife Amy. Our first time meeting.”
Lightfoot was in California to raise money for Boxer and look for donors of her own among California’s upscale LGBT community. She apparently added dinner with Oprah to her wish list.
Back in Chicago, she discussed the dinner Tuesday at an unrelated event.
“Our folks had reached out, and she was very generous in inviting my wife and I to dine with her at her house,” Lightfoot said.
A welcome wagon of sorts has assembled to greet Lightfoot as she settles into office. Shortly after her historic election as Chicago’s first African American woman and first openly gay mayor, Lightfoot has taken calls from politicians including former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump.
Lightfoot and her wife had dinner with Gov. J.B. Pritzker just days after her April victory.
Lightfoot called Winfrey a “tremendous person” and said she was clearly “up to date” on issues in Chicago — Winfrey hosted her Emmy award-winning “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in Chicago from 1986 to 2011.
Winfrey permanently closed her Harpo Studios in the West Loop in 2015, after moving her productions to a studio in West Hollywood, California.
“I was grateful for the opportunity to meet with her,” Lightfoot said.
