How Oprah has changed my life.

After 25 years on daytime television, Oprah Winfrey has touched the lives of millions.

Best-selling authors whose books she has chosen for her book club and the owners of small businesses whose products made its list "favourite things", can say you about the fame and fortune that followed after a mention on "The Oprah Winfrey Show".

Then there are the ordinary people who went on their daily lives when they were called to be on the show. In 25 years and 4,561 shows, Winfrey interviewed some 30,000 guests and many their lives were changed forever.

"His legacy will live on through me and his other guests who have undergone profound changes," Cheryl Hallett of Wellington, Fla., told ABCNews.com. "She is a woman and she has changed so many lives and these people have changed other lives."

In the course of one of the salons of beauty of Winfrey in 2000, the Hallett knee-length hair has been truncated to above his ears. For someone who was known to his friends for his hair, which would be life change enough. But Hallett, now 51, was about to come face to face with his alcohol problem.

She recalled "riding in the limousine and see the horizon of Chicago, I felt special,". "It was the first time that I was in a limousine just for me, and it is because Oprah has chosen my letter.". I thought, "maybe I do not have a gift for writing, it is perhaps something valuable and valid on me." I had this feeling that something was about to change. ?

Is no longer able to hide under the cover of his hair, just realized Hallett know where she had moved away and how much it has consumed alcohol to cope with the daily pain. Two months after its appearance on the show, Hallett has begun a recovery program and took his last drink. A year later Hallett, a single mother of a year, met her second husband, and together they have two children.

Hallett now use her voice to help other women through their recovery from alcohol abuse. "I get to share my story and it is a true gift, one of the largest donations," said Hallett. "And Oprah has been the catalyst of the thing."

Hallett, says that his appearance in the show gave him a sense of value and merit. "I couldn't let be for nothing," she said. "I couldn't it let go to waste."

Last week, Hallett returned to the show, 11 years after his first appearance, to talk about how his life had changed. "It was a way for me to say at his mercy."

Skipping school

Kiley Russell would also like to thank Winfrey. In September 2004, Russell, then a school administrator - Chicago area, jumped the first day of school to attend "The Oprah Winfrey Show".

It is a good thing too, because this day of good omen, Russell and all the members of the audience received a car brand new, a Pontiac G6.

Russell was in need of a new car, but she needed a new life and more. After diagnosed with lupus, a chronic immune disorder, a few years earlier, his doctor told him that she needed to change his life and control stress if ever she hoped to be in good health again.

When Winfrey told the audience, "we offer not only cars, we're life," Russell said: "he simply rang true for me, it pierced my soul."

For years, Russell had SOAP and scrub as gifts for friends and tossed the idea into a business. It now has the seed money. A week after winning the car, Russell sold and ploughed the sum of $20,000 in his fledgling business, Big Girl cosmetics.