The mother of media mogul Oprah Winfrey has died at 83.
Vernita Lee passed away on Thanksgiving at her Milwaukee home, People reported.
A rep for Oprah confirmed to the magazine that a private funeral service has been held for Lee, and that she has been laid to rest.
A cause of death for Lee was not immediately revealed. Oprah has not publicly commented on her mother's passing.
Lee was a single mother when she gave birth to Oprah in Mississippi in 1954. Winfrey lived with her grandmother for the first six years of her life, before moving to Milwaukee to live with her mother.
Oprah's father, Vernon Lee, reportedly only had one encounter with Lee before she gave birth to their daughter.
"(Oprah's) mother wrote me," Vernon once told People, "and told me that, you know, the baby had just come, in a letter: what it weighed, what its name was and so forth and so on."
Lee had four children total. She put another daughter, Patricia Amanda Faye Lee, up for adoption during the early 1960s.
Oprah and Patricia then connected years later.
Lee's son, Jeffrey Lee, died in 1989, and her other daughter, Patricia Lee Lloyd, passed away in 2003.
