Oprah Shares the Real Story Behind Her Iconic ‘You Get a Car!’ Moment

“You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!”

It’s been eleven years since Oprah Winfrey shouted those now-iconic words. On Sept. 13, 2004, the media mogul gave each member of her audience a Pontiac G6 — and it quickly became one of the most memorable Oprah moments of all time. Even now, a decade later, it continues to generate meme after meme.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Winfrey revealed how that moment happened. For starters, it was totally improvised:

“I was saying that because people were screaming so loudly they didn’t know what was going on,” Winfrey explained. She had just given every audience member a box and said only one of them contained a key. So naturally they were confused when everyone started jumping up and down with excitement.

“Prior to that moment, I had said, ‘Open up your boxes. One person has a key.’ So when I looked at the faces of the audience, they go, ‘But I have a key … but she has a key,’ so that’s why I said, ‘You get a car! You get a car!’ to try to clarify, because they all looked so confused. Everybody gets a car!”

Years later, Winfrey called the giveaway one of her “all-time, favorite, happiest moments ever.”