Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Tuesday, February 24, 2004

Oprah leads La Crescent woman to paydirt

By MATT JAMES / La Crosse Tribune

Yvonne Ramsden has been an Oprah fan since the beginning. You saw those Howard Dean commercials where he said he opposed the war back before it was popular to oppose the war?

Well, Yvonne was an Oprah fan before it was cool to be an Oprah fan.

It was the mid 1970s. Oprah was barely 20, already a news anchor at WTVF-TV in Nashville, Tenn. Yvonne and her husband, John, had two young sons and lived in Clarksville, Tenn., which by the way, still has L & N Train Station, the inspiration for that Monkees song, "Last Train to Clarksville."

Some people think it was a war protest song. Some think it was a love song about a guy hoping his girl is waiting for him at the station. Some think the Monkees are too cheesy to have seriously protested anything. They are probably all correct.

The point is, Oprah was on TV in Nashville and Yvonne was watching her on TV in Clarksville, an hour away, and she could tell then that this Oprah Winfrey woman was going to be a star. Ha! Wrong!

OK, turns out she was right. Oprah now owns everything south of Santa's outhouse. Her net worth is something like 4 tra-drillion-zillion dollars. She could buy Sweden and have it FedEx-ed to another galaxy ... where the aliens would probably ask the delivery people, "So what's Oprah like in person?"

Yvonne moved to La Crescent and amassed her own kind of wealth. Her babies are all grown up now, starting families of their own. John retired from Trane awhile back. They're building a house down by the river.

She's still a huge fan of Oprah. Always has been. Yvonne wanted to be in the audience at a taping of the Oprah Winfrey Show one day, which if you've ever tried to get tickets is like saying, "I'd really like to sip tea with the Queen of England." Good luck.

Not to ruin the ending here, but when Yvonne talks these days, every so often, in the middle of normal conversation, she just blurts things out, like, "National television! Yvonne Ramsden!"

You could say she's excited.

"I saw my face on TV.

I saw it again today!"

So here's the story ...

"I was right on stage with Oprah."

OK. OK. Let's not give it all away.

Yvonne happened to walk past her television back on Feb. 2. The Oprah show was on, and she heard a voice asking about antiques. Now Yvonne has some pottery she was given by John's grandmother back when they got married, but she's never been able to find out what it's worth.

Seems that Oprah was having her own appraisal show, a lot like PBS's "Antique Road Show." She was going. End of story. If the entire state of Wisconsin flooded, Yvonne was swimming across the darn thing and taking her pottery to Harpo Studios. She e-mailed the show. Told them what she had. They e-mailed her back. Whadaya know? They invited her to Chicago.

"Harpo" is Oprah spelled backwards and what Winfrey names everything she owns. Harpo Productions. Harpo Films. Harpo Print. You get the idea.

All Yvonne wanted to do was see Harpo Studios and buy something in the gift shop. Antiques were a good excuse.

John is more of an ESPN guy, as you can imagine, not so much interested in five-hour car trips to purchase Oprah sweatshirts. So Yvonne took her friend Tina Schmitz from Brownsville, who as it turns out, is the proud owner of a Shirley Temple doll worth $75.

It also turns out that the gift shop was closed that day. But that would be the only bad luck.

In a room of people, one of the appraisers saw the two pieces Yvonne brought and came right up to her. One was a stoneware whiskey flask in the shape of a pig. It was made in Illinois in the 1850s. The other was these two jugs that share one handle, made in Connecticut in the 1830s.

"I figured they were worth something," Yvonne says.

Only they wouldn't tell her how much. They just filmed and took pictures and told her she might actually be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. One of the appraisers wrote a note that said, "See you soon." And with that, they drove back to La Crescent.

Did they call? You bet they called. On Valentine's Day, no less. They called again on Monday, flew her back to Chicago on Tuesday, put her in a suite on the 24th floor, drove her around in limos, and on Wednesday, she was sitting in the front row and Oprah was saying, "Where is Yvonne?"

On Feb. 2, she was in La Crescent, Minn., standing next to her television, trying to scribble down an 800 number. On Feb. 18, she was in Chicago standing next to Oprah.

The queen will see you now. How do you like your tea?

The show will air this Wednesday at 4 p.m. on NBC. You'll have to watch to find out how much Yvonne's antiques were worth. Rest assured that Oprah does not fly people to Chicago to whack their pottery with a 9-iron and yell, "Ha-ha! It was worthless!"

A little teaser: Lara Spencer, the correspondent for "Good Morning America" and the new host of the "Antique Road Show," was on the show, too. When they said how much Yvonne's stuff was worth, Yvonne hugged Spencer and started high-fiving people.

"When something like this happens to you, you don't remember anything for two days," Yvonne says.

And after you hear what they're worth, remember that they've been sitting around the Ramsden's house as decorations. She's already thinking about selling them.

Get this. She wants to buy a plasma TV with the money. Seems fitting. You could say that's how this all got started.

Matt James can be reached at mjames@lacrossetribune.com