CHICAGO, USA – Step outside Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios and into the near west side neighbourhood that’s been home to her television talk show for two decades, and it’s easy to get a sense of what she’s meant to Chicago.

“I used to live across the street from Harpo and when I moved there it was me and cross-dressing crack addicts and Harpo. And now it’s strollers and little white dogs all over,” said Paul O’Connor, whose job has been to sell the city to businesses looking to relocate and those wondering why they should stay.

Along with the upscale condominiums and pricey restaurants that replaced the run-down apartments, abandoned warehouses and vacant storefronts, it’s a sentiment that helps explain just how nervous people in Chicago are about Winfrey’s announcement that next season, the 25th, will be the last for The Oprah Winfrey Show.

“Chicago’s going to find out that she’s a real engine to hotel rooms, flowers, limo drivers, you name it,” said Joel Nickson, who owns Wishbone restaurant just down the street. “Even when she’s not doing the show, we see people all the time taking cabs out here, taking pictures in front of the place.”

Media analysts will discuss the millions of viewers worldwide who have eagerly watched Winfrey’s show, tuned into others she told them to watch and read books she told them to read. The story in Chicago will be what she’s meant to Chicago.

It’s a story that starts in the neighbourhood that people visited just to see her show – then they’d go off to explore the rest of the city. It’s from the neighbourhood that Winfrey bragged about Chicago, reminding all those who knew she could take her show just about anywhere that she wanted to be right here.

“Isn’t this the most fabulous city in the world?” Winfrey yelled to more than 20,000 fans who crowded Chicago’s Magnificent Mile in September for the taping of this season’s premiere.

Without Winfrey, some wonder.

“She is part of the cultural infrastructure which provides a rich intellectual and cultural life to the city and that is absolutely critical for corporate decision making,” said O’Connor, who now works for the Chicago Metropolis 2020 civic group after leaving World Business Chicago, a not-for-profit economic development corporation that worked to attract and keep businesses in Chicago.