WINFREY: So when the Bernie Madoff scandal broke, most people wondered how his own wife could not have known something, didn't know anything about his billion- dollar Ponzi scheme. My next guest says she gets it, why she didn't know, because she's been there. Here's Karen's story. KAREN: Our lifestyle was very opulent. It wasn't unusual for us to be spending $100,000 a month on credit cards. WINFREY: Karen was a Yale and Oxford graduate; her husband, a hedge fund manager making big money on Wall Street, his company worth more than $50 million. KAREN: I had no part in any of the finances ever in our marriage, so it was enough for me to be told by my husband that he was working on deals and that he was on Wall Street. I didn't ask any further questions. WINFREY: Karen and her husband were living the ultimate dream. They were the parents of two beautiful children, had fancy cars, a multi-million-dollar mansion in the country, and three luxury condos overlooking Central Park. KAREN: So this is Madison Avenue, New York, and this was my playground. And what we couldn't find here, we would go to Milan and find there. The lifestyle involved big, plush estates, luxurious cars, trips to exotic locations, children in private schools. I became very seduced by the lifestyle. WINFREY: Even though their lives appeared to be perfect, Karen says the marriage was rocky at times. KAREN: There were obviously other women, and there were signs of that throughout. His long absences. You know, being away three days at a time, not coming home till 4:00 in the morning. WINFREY: Karen says she overlooked some of her husband's affairs, because she didn't want to give up her Park Avenue lifestyle. Little did she know, it was already unraveling. WINFREY: So at the age of 36 with her third baby on the way, Karen's husband came home from work and dropped a massive bombshell. For the past five years, he'd been conning investors out of money to the tune of nearly $12 million. He was caught, he pled guilty without her knowing-- and listen to this--was headed to prison. So, I understand you drove him to prison, right? KAREN: I did. I'll never forget that morning. He came home at 4:00 in the morning, drunk, and I awoke to a noise outside the master bedroom. I went out to investigate, thinking it was perhaps one of the children, and I found him tying a hangman's knot. He told me that he had been told that he needed to go to prison that morning. I had no idea when he was going to prison, so it was a big shock that it had happened and he was going. WINFREY: Yeah. So he had been indicted by the F.B.I., and you didn't even know it? KAREN: I did know prior to this. WINFREY: Mm-hmm. KAREN: But I didn't know when he was going to prison. WINFREY: Okay. So when he is tying the hangman's knot? When was he doing that? KAREN: The night before he was due to go to prison. WINFREY: He was going to hang himself? KAREN: And it was a pretend attempt. It was to elicit my sympathy. WINFREY: Mm-hmm. KAREN: And I pulled him away from what he was doing and ushered him into a cold shower and summoned the strength to get ready to drive him to prison. So we arrived. He was greeted by a prison officer, and the prison officer patted him down in front of me, which must have been humiliating for him--mortifying for me to see. Then he climbed into the prison vehicle, and I watched the vehicle driven away deep into the air force base. And I watched his head, the back of his head, get smaller and smaller and smaller. And then he was gone. And then suddenly, I was back inside my car, and I can't remember getting back into the car, and I was crying. The tears were pouring down my face. And eventually, somebody tapped the window and I looked over, and it was the guard from the gate. And he said to me, "Are you all right, ma'am?" And I nodded yes, and he said, "Good, because if you are, you need to move your car for another." And it was my wake-up call that there wasn't going to be any sympathy for me. And there shouldn't have been. I was sitting in a gold BMW at the time. WINFREY: Mm-hmm. KAREN: That there would be no sympathy. And that day began for me an absolute nightmare. And I was soon to find out that the properties would be taken. At that stage, I didn't know that they would be. I hadn't been told that he had put this in the plea agreement. WINFREY: Do you share a role in it, though? I mean, do you share a role in it? KAREN: Yes. WINFREY: Because I really appreciated the line that you expressed in the tape where you said you were "seduced." I think that's a really... KAREN: Yes. Yes. WINFREY: ...good choice of words. That you were seduced by all of the wealth and seduced by this lifestyle. KAREN: I was. WINFREY: It's intoxicating. KAREN: It is intoxicating. And money is very seductive and that lifestyle is very seductive. And yes, I was absolutely seduced. The part that I played was obviously not anything to do with the crime. I had no idea the crime was being committed. My part in retrospect--and I didn't appreciate this at the time. It took some time to self-reflect-- but my part in retrospect was that I had some culpability in expecting this lifestyle and wanting this big lifestyle and expecting that the bills would be paid, in giving up my financial independence. I did that without thinking about it. WINFREY: Yeah. Would you say the same thing, Barbra? BARBARA: To a degree, yeah. It was a different situation. WINFREY: Yeah? Different situations, I know, but--and I'm talking about in sort of-- sort of accepting that someone else is going to take care of things. Yes. You talk about that in "Perfection." Yes. KAREN: It was very easy for me to give that up because I was-- at the time he began to bring in very big dollars I began having children. So it coincided with my wanting to spend time with the children, and I had three--one, two, three, one after another. So it coincided with motherhood, too. WINFREY: So I think the message in all of this is also what you're talking about, and that is, even though you have-- and if you're fortunate enough to be taken care of, and you have, you know, the loveliest of surroundings, and you have access, you should not surrender your own sense of self-worth and independence. KAREN: Absolutely. WINFREY: Even though you don't have to work, you shouldn't just give all of that up. KAREN: Yes. Don't. Hold on to it. That's the lesson I learned. And in working, it also validates you. It gives you confidence, and it validates your talents and your skills, whatever they may be. And I had lost that, too. WINFREY: Explain this to me, though. I understand you took your husband back, after he got out of prison? KAREN: No, I didn't take him back romantically, but I allowed him to come back to the family home when he came out of prison. This was three and a half years after he had been incarcerated. At the time when I took him to prison, I was so full of anger that whenever he phoned from the prison, I wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise. I was screaming at him, "How could you do this to your family? How could you do this to your children?" And that rage took a long-- you know, took up a lot of my energy, and I realized I had to let it go. And eventually, I did. And there were a myriad number of issues that I had to work my way through- -one of them, working out how to support my children. KAREN: And eventually, over time, I began to look at my marriage in a way-- a bit more sympathetically, perhaps, and wrongly, I suppose. But when he was writing to me, at first, I wouldn't read his letters from prison, because of the anger. But slowly, as I began to have some sympathy for his situation and to appreciate that he still is the father of my children, I did begin to read those letters. And in those letters, he was apologetic. He was accepting responsibility. He was talking about how he had suddenly come to appreciate the value of his family. KAREN: So when he came out, I felt terribly sorry that he had nowhere else to go. He was still the father of my children. And I allowed him to stay. He slept on the couch, but I allowed him to come back into the family home--and wrongly. That was a facade, I learned after about a month and a half of him being out of prison. He could not keep up the facade, and he really hadn't accepted responsibility. He really wasn't sorry. And his family wasn't his priority. And the same patterns that had been there before started to reemerge. WINFREY: You need that Maya Angelou lesson. KAREN: Yes. I do. Yes, we suffer from that same problem. WINFREY: When people show you who they are, believe them. KAREN: Yes, that's who they are. WINFREY: Yes. So you had an epiphany about secrets in a relationship. KAREN: I did. And I learned that there's never just one. Never. WINFREY: Correct, correct. There's never just one. KAREN: No. If there's one betrayal, there's almost always others. Yes. WINFREY: And so, that lesson has come hard for you? When you realized the second time, after you allowed him home, and he served the time in prison, and you believed in the lett-- because you know what? When you're in prison, it's very easy to write a sympathetic letter. KAREN: Of course, and I appreciate... INFREY: Yeah. What else you got to do? KAREN: Yes. [LAUGHTER] WINFREY: To say how sorry you are and how much you understand and... KAREN: Yes, yes. WINFREY: Really, you're a different man and you saw Jesus and everything. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] WINFREY: You know? What else is there to do? Yeah. KAREN: Right, right. Well, I appreciate all of that now. WINFREY: You appreciate that now? KAREN: Yes, yes. WINFREY: So, you're saying, though, you believed it at first? KAREN: I wanted to believe it. What was hardest for me to let go was not the lifestyle, not the properties, not the friends. What was hardest for me to let go was the fantasy of my marriage. I wanted to believe in the fairy tale romance, that it was still there and still possible. WINFREY: That is such a brilliant thing that you were just saying, because I think for so many women, and men, too, who find it hard to let go, what you're really letting go is not what you had. Because what you had was a mess. KAREN: Correct. WINFREY: What you're letting go is the dream... KAREN: Yes. WINFREY: ...of what you wanted to have. So it's letting go of the dream of what you'd hoped it could be. KAREN: And that's the hardest thing to let go of. Yes. And when I did let go of it, there was such clarity. There was such liberty. I felt free to be myself and to move forward. And until I got to that point, he was still holding me back. WINFREY: Mm-hmm. Would you say you were living in a fog? KAREN: Oh, yes. WINFREY: During your marriage? KAREN: Oh, yes, yes. In two ways. Motherhood. I was in a fog because I wasn't getting very much sleep with three young boys. And the fog of affluence. That it... WINFREY: And the fog of affluence? KAREN: The fog of affluence. And so you lose touch. And for me--you lose touch with reality, but for me, I also forgot that, hey, you know, I'm an educated woman. I know how to think for myself. I know how to survive on my own, and I had forgotten those things. And it took this tragedy to wake me up. WINFREY: Would you say you'd lost yourself in the marriage? KAREN: I did. Completely lost myself. WINFREY: Yeah. I know a lot of women watching you right now can get-- understand that. How quickly do your rich friends leave you? KAREN: Like that. WINFREY: Like that? That's what I hear. They're gone. KAREN: Yeah. Like that. WINFREY: They're gone. Because they're, like, "Don't come to me for money." KAREN: No. Well--no, that's right. They're very tight. And in my case, I was living in a community full of Wall Street wives. These were women who also probably really didn't know what their husbands were up to because they were in a wealthy enclave an hour north of Manhattan, and their husbands all week were in Manhattan staying over in pied-a-terres, and so they didn't want to see what was happening to me because just like that, it could be happening to them. WINFREY: Well, thank you for joining us. KAREN: Thank you very much, Oprah. Thank you. WINFREY: And thank you to all of our guests today. Remember, if somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Bye, everybody. [APPLAUSE]
