Oprah with Belle Burden on the Collapse of Her 20 Year Marriage & Her Bestselling Memoir

The Oprah Podcast

Harpo

Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s the new memoir that has captured the attention of women and as Oprah describes, “everyone is talking about it." From the outside, Belle Burden seemed to have the perfect life: three thriving kids, a happy marriage and a summer home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Then, one day, she gets a phone call that shatters everything she believed to be true about her marriage and her life. Oprah sits down with Belle to talk about the devastation that followed the shocking end of her marriage and how she slowly rebuilt her life into something better than she could have imagined. Drawing on revelations shared in her New York Times bestseller, Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage, Belle tells Oprah how her prestigious family pedigree couldn’t protect her from the pain of divorce. She also explains how sharing her story has empowered her to become the person she was meant to be. BUY THE BOOK! https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760850/strangers-by-belle-burden/ Vote now to support The Oprah Podcast for the Webby Awards https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/individual-episode/interview-or-talk-show 00:00:00 - Welcome Belle Burden, author of ‘Strangers’ 00:03:30 - Belle learning of her husband’s affair 00:12:10 - After learning of the affair 00:16:00 - Being told she was crazy 00:17:48 - Telling their kids 00:25:00 - The search for why 00:26:15 - Is divorce worse than death? 00:27:40 - The shame of being left 00:30:35 - Why she wrote the NYT essay 00:34:00 - Her path forward 00:35:35 - Why she wrote the book 00:36:30 - What she hopes her book gives other women 00:38:50 - Her prenup 00:42:36 - Belle’s mother Amanda joins 00:46:15 - He didn’t want joint custody 00:49:20 - What she had to do every day 00:53:30 - How she feels now 01:01:22 - Belle on her book Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh my goodness, Bell. We got some talking to do, girl.
0:06.0	I see that you've marked the book up, Andrea.
0:09.0	I have marked the book.
0:10.0	I wanted to do this book because there are so many friends that I've had who've gone through this,
0:15.0	and I feel like I've gone through it with them.
0:18.0	Yes.
0:19.0	You are every woman that you have written the manual for every woman.
0:23.7	This is the, this is book is just, it's a memoir of marriage, but it's also a memoir of every
0:28.6	woman who's gone through divorce.
0:30.3	Suddenly hearing from her husband, I don't want to be married anymore.
0:34.1	I'm unhappy and you thought everything was okay.
0:36.2	And he, yeah, this is the book.
0:39.6	Thank you. Everybody's talking about it. You're going to get into it now. Okay, I'm ready.
0:44.8	Okay. Ask me anything. Okay.
0:49.3	Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Oprah podcast. It's good to be with you here i'm really excited to talk about
0:56.4	our subject today take a moment and try to imagine this happening to you a lot of you don't even
1:03.2	have to imagine it because it's already happened out of the blue your spouse of 20 years and father to your three children says this.
1:13.4	I thought I was happy, but I'm not.
1:16.1	I thought I wanted our life, but I don't.
1:19.0	I feel like a switch has been flipped.
1:21.2	I'm done.
1:22.3	You can have custody of the kids.
	...

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