Ellen DeGeneres Tearfully Thanks Audience While Saying ‘Goodbye’ on Final ‘Ellen Show’ Episode: ‘I Hope’ I Made You Happy

usmagazine.com:

End of an era. Ellen DeGeneres bid her talk show and its viewers an emotional farewell after 19 seasons on the air during the final episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.“I walked out here 19 years ago and I said, ‘This is the start of a relationship.’ And today is not the end of a relationship, it’s more of a little break.

You can see other talk shows now. I may see another audience once in a while,” the comedian, 64, said during her final monologue on the Thursday, May 26 episode of her eponymous talk show. “Twenty years ago when we tried to sell this show, no one thought this would work.

Not because it was a different kind of show — it was because I was different. Very few stations wanted to buy the show and here we are 20 years later, celebrating this amazing journey together.”DeGeneres then reflected on all of the ways the pop culture landscape has changed since she first began her talk show in September 2003. “When we started this show I couldn’t say ‘gay’ on the show. … I couldn’t say ‘we,’ because that implied that I was with someone.

Sure couldn’t say ‘wife,’ that’s because it wasn’t legal for gay people to get married. And now I say ‘wife’ all the time,” she said, as wife Portia de Rossi tearfully cheered her on from the front row. “What a beautiful, beautiful journey that we have been [on] together.”She continued: “If this show has made you smile, if it has lifted you up when you’re in a period of some type of pain, some type of sadness, anything you are going through, then I have done my job. … This show has forever changed my life.