'I'll just say until we meet again,' the 57-year-old mogul said.
She hugged and kissed her long term partner Stedman Graham and shook hands with audience members before walking through the halls of Harpo Studios in Chicago, hugging and crying with her staff.
Goodbye: Oprah Winfrey bade farewell to her talk show today after 25 years giving fans a 'love letter' in thanks for their support over the years
Feeling the love: The 57-year-old walked on stage to a standing ovation from her studio audience that was filled with her 'ultimate viewers'
Winfrey shouted 'We did it!' as the last shot of the finale showed Winfrey walking away with her cocker spaniel, Sadie.
Earlier she had walked on stage to a standing ovation from her studio audience. She thanked the viewers for watching her for a quarter of a century.
'Twenty-five years and I'm still saying, "Thank you America,"' Winfrey said. 'Thank you so much. There are no words to match this moment.'
Heartfelt: Oprah was on stage alone for the duration of the show where she said that 'there are no words to match this moment'
Excited: Hundreds of fans waited outside Oprah's Harpo Studios in Chicago yesterday to catch a glimpse of the media mogul on her last day
Queen of Talk: A dedicated fan paid her own tribute to the talk show host who has touched the hearts of many viewers in the past quarter of a century
The television host turned media titan told viewers that sometimes she was a teacher, but more often her viewers instructed her. She called the episode her 'last class.'
'I listened and grew and sometimes you grew along with me,' she said. 'I always wanted to be a teacher and I ended up in the world's biggest classroom. And this, my friends, will be the last class from this stage.'
Oprah, who is also known to treat audiences to shock surprises and giveaways on the long-running show, said that the final episode would be about thanking her dedicated audience.
'There will be no surprises - you will not be getting a car or a treat!...this is my love letter to you,' she said.
The hour was a heartfelt recap of her long-standing talk show.
'4561 days of my life is what this show's about,' she said.
OPRAH FACTS AT A GLANCE
* Winfrey was born to a poor, single mother in rural Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she grew up without a television at home
* At age 19 became the first female African-American news anchor.
* In 1984, she moved to Chicago to host a morning talk show which was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show within a year. She came to own the program through her company Harpo Inc, and it was nationally syndicated in 1986.
* The Oprah Winfrey Show is the top-rated U.S. daytime talk show. Its final season was watched by an average 6.4 million U.S. viewers and millions more in 150 nations overseas.
* The Oprah Winfrey Show has won 48 daytime Emmy awards, including those for Winfrey as host.
* The Oprah Book Club has championed 65 titles and has almost two million members.
* Winfrey was ranked the third-most-powerful woman in the world on Forbes magazine's 2010 list, behind U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld. She was ranked 130 on Forbes' 2010 U.S. rich list, with an estimated fortune of $2.7 billion.
* Winfrey was Oscar-nominated for her role in the 1985 movie The Color Purple. She also produced the Broadway stage version of The Color Purple and the movies Beloved and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
* Other Oprah Winfrey projects include her charity Angel Network, the O magazine, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg, South Africa, and the OWN cable TV channel
She also joked: 'You cheered me on though you occasionally complained about my outfits. My big hair, and earrings the size of napkins.
'I see know you had every reason to but at the time, you couldn't tell me nothing. I thought I was styling pretty good!'
She also told the audience she had never had a day off from the show.
'I never missed a day in 25 years because you were here,' she said.
Oprah showed clips of some of the bravest guests on the show, including AIDS victims, rape victims, alcoholic and drug addicts, as well as clips from The Colour Purple, which she starred in with Whoopi Goldberg in 1985.
She said: 'I've done the drive here thousands of times and today it was the last time so the drive was a little different.
'Today was a different kind of drive into work.'
Baltimore born Oprah, who had her first chat show at age 29, also heaped praise on her staff and team.
'I have the best team in TV,' she said. 'Not just because they're great at what they do, not just because they work 17 hour days - it's because we all here are aligned with a vision of service. So thank you for your love and your loyalty.'
The final Oprah Winfrey Show, which was taped in Chicago yesterday, opened with a clip from her first show.
Winfrey was the only person on stage with little background music and very short flashback clips were shown.
She wore a candy pink dress with scarves on the hip and with her hair loose,
The talk show which is produced by her own company started with just a handful of staff - she now has nearly 400 employees and has built a billion dollar empire - a long way from growing up poor in Mississippi.
Some fans across the country planned parties for the finale. Sharon Evans, 53, of Chicago had pancakes with her mother and girlfriends.
'She was very subdued today and I appreciated that she was taking that last hour not to showcase any celebrities or favourite things,' she said. 'It was truly what she said, a love letter to us.'
'When she came out, her appearance, the way she stepped on stage and the message she brought about finding yourself, your purpose,' said Wanda Nash, 47, of Chicago, an executive assistant and foster parent. 'It was all about Oprah.'
Winfrey announced in November 2009 that she would end her popular talk show after 25 years.
The taping came a week after Hollywood A-listers and 13,000 fans bid Winfrey farewell in a double-episode extravaganza at Chicago's United Centre.
The shows that aired on Monday and Tuesday included Aretha Franklin, Tom Cruise, Stevie
Wonder, Michael Jordan, Beyonce and Madonna, among other stars of television, music and movies.
They were just a few of the approximately 30,000 guests who have appeared on the show over 25 years.
First day: Oprah debuted her nationally syndicated show in 1986 and it has gone on to make her a self-made billionaire
What a send off: Winfrey's final show on will air on Wednesday. From left Oprah on stage with guests including Tom Hanks, Queen Latifah, Madonna, Dakota, Halle, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise
The final taping nevertheless had its share of celebrities in the audience including Tyler Perry, Maria Shriver, Suze Orman and Cicely Tyson. None of them joined Winfrey on stage.
There were 404 audience members, according to Harpo Productions. The show received 1.4 million ticket requests throughout its final season.
Oprah will now be based in California at her Montecito home. She will focus her efforts on her new network, OWN which launched in January.
OPRAH WINFREY'S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS
SEXUAL ABUSE REVELATIONS, 1986
In a disclosure that could have ruined her career, Oprah's brave confession that she had been abused as a child only served to help others to open up in similar ways.
People with addictions, family secrets, survivors of abuse all felt comfortable to share their stories with Oprah who had her own horrific past.
PULLING WAGON OF FAT AFTER 67LB WEIGHT LOSS, 1988
In still what is Oprah's highest rated show, the image of the yo-yo dieter pulling a red wagon full of 67lbs of fat still resonates with her viewers.
Oprah put the weight back on and has been very vocal of her battle of the bulge. She has showcased dozens of diets on her show over the years but declared last year that she had given up dieting.
'I'M GAY': ELLEN DEGENERES COMES OUT, 1997
Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres trusted Oprah to reveal publicly for the first time that she is a lesbian.
The move not only cemented Oprah as the go-to for big revelations but relaunched Ellen's career and she now has her own highly rated talk show.
'YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR', 2004
Oprah surprised 276 members of her studio audience with a new Pontiac car valued at nearly $30,000.
The over enthusiastic host and crowd was parodied for years to come but the looks on the faces of her fans when they each received a key for their new vehicle was priceless.
TOM CRUISE JUMPING ON THE SOFA, 2005
The moment Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's sofa to show his excitement of falling in love with Katie Holmes, neither of them could have imagined the furore it would cause.
The Mission Impossible star was mocked and derided for his actions that was parodied by many comedians and it apparently caused a rift between the pair for a while but they subsequently made up.
OPRAH WINFREY CONFRONTING AUTHOR JAMES FREY FOR MEMOIR LIES, 2006
Oprah's Book Club was hugely successful encourage the sales of over 30 million books and had two million members.
A Million Little Pieces author James Frey was confronted by Oprah after his gritty memoir about his recovery from drug addiction was proven to be mostly fiction.
He was invited back on Oprah's show last week so they could make amends.
OPENING OF SOUTH AFRICA SCHOOL, 2007
When Oprah cut the ribbon of the school she built for girls in South Africa, it was the realisation of a life long dream for the star who said if she had not become a journalist she would have become a fourth grade teacher.
Her Oprah's Angel Network foundation has raised over $80million. She has also contributed to nearly 65,000 children around the world receiving an education over the years.
BACKING BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT, 2007
Oprah received a backlash from many female fans who were disappointed she did not support Hilary Clinton for President and instead backed Barack Obama at a rally in Iowa.
It is widely believed that Oprah's support helped carry the first African American president to the White House.
OPRAH'S FAVOURITE THINGS, 2011
One of the most coveted tickets to get when going for an Oprah taping was for the Favourite Things shows where audience members were inundated with lavish gifts, hand picked by the host from her list of favourite things.
Anything from vacations, cars, diamond earrings, television, iPads and clothing were handed out to ecstatic guests.
HOLLYWOOD'S ELITE GIVE OPRAH A GRAND FAREWELL, 2011
The list of celebrities who attended Oprah's farewell celebration in Chicago last week read like the who's who of Hollywood.
Tom Cruise, Beyonce, Will Smith, Madonna, Tom Hanks, Aretha Franklin and Maria Shriver were among the many guests to pay touching tributes to the self-made billionaire.
Her two best friends Maria Shriver and Gail King were there for support.
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