Even now, weeks after the Royal Wedding, I still have questions about why certain people were invited and why the seating arrangements seemed so unusual. We’ll probably never know for sure why George and Amal Clooney were not only invited to the wedding but the after-party as well, or why they got such prime seating. But the one thing I’ve always assumed and believed with all my heart is that Meghan and Harry invited Oprah Winfrey to their wedding because they weren’t allowed to invite the Obamas. There were some claims that Oprah was invited because she has successfully lobbied Doria Ragland for an interview, and the message was that Doria was selling out her daughter too. Doria isn’t giving interviews. But she did spend some time with Oprah before the wedding. Oprah told Entertainment Tonight all about it:

Before the wedding, Oprah spent an afternoon with Markle’s mom, where the pair spent their day snacking and doing yoga. Speaking with ET’s Nischelle Turner on the red carpet, Winfrey opened up about their relaxing time together, and rebuffed rumors that she had showered Ragland with gifts in the hopes of getting an exclusive interview with her.

“The story was that Meghan’s mom had come to my house and she left laden with gifts,” Winfrey recalled. “You know what the gifts were? First of all, she’s great at yoga, so I said, ‘Bring your yoga mat and your sneaks in case we just want to do yoga on the lawn.’ So one of the bags was a yoga mat and the other was lunch.”

According to the Wrinkle in Time star, she and Ragland enjoyed a dessert made from fresh kumquats. “She said, ‘I love kumquats,’ and I said, ‘I have a kumquat tree! You want some kumquats?’ So it was a basket of kumquats, people,” Winfrey explained. “For all of the people who said I am getting her gifts and I’m trying to bribe her for an interview — they were kumquats. If kumquats can get you an interview, I’m all for it!”

Weeks after their get-together, Winfrey and Ragland were both in England watching Markle walk down the aisle for her wedding to Prince Harry in one of the most highly anticipated events in years. The whole experience was described by Winfrey as “transformative.”

“It was more than a wedding, I thought,” she explained. “It was a cultural moment. And you could not be there or watching on television… and not feel that there was a shift that just happened in the middle of it. I think it’s bigger than them and I think it bodes well for hope for all of us,” Winfrey added.

[From ET]

LOL, Oprah bribing people with kumquats. Now I sort of wish that Doria would sit down for an interview with Oprah, just so I can see them interact, because it sounds like they had a nice time together. But it also seems like Doria is just a really low-key person in general, right? Like, Oprah invites you over, you go. Of course you do. SHE IS OPRAH. But Doria’s still not going to sell out her daughter to Oprah. So she took Oprah’s kumquats and her yoga mat and went home. There you go.

Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News.