- We get an insight
into Steve Jobs
that I've never seen before.
Even in reading the biography
of him, we see a side of him
that we didn't know.
You became, as you just said,
really close friends with him
and he actually told
you about the cancer.
That moment on the
bench, describe
that moment on the bench.
We were announcing
the acquisition of Pixar
from Pixar.
We had gone up to
Pixar's headquarters
in Emeryville, California.
It was a $7.4
billion acquisition
and we would be announcing it
at around 1 o'clock California
time, after the
stock market closed.
And we were assembled in a
conference room kind of waiting
for the announcement to be made
and Steve showed up at the door
and pointing his finger at me
or did sort of this and said,
can we go for a walk?
And I thought, oh, he wants to--
this can't be good.
He wants to get out of the
deal or he wants more money
or he wants something.
I just thought, why would he
want to go for a walk with me
on the brink of making
this gigantic announcement?
And we went for a walk.
The Pixar campus is
this beautiful campus
with beautiful walking
paths and there was a bench
that the two of us
sat down and he put
his arm behind me on the bench.
I thought, this is
very interesting.
I wasn't close with
him at this point.
I was getting close.
OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah.
And he said, I'm going to
tell you something that only
my doctor and my wife knows.
Wow.
ROBERT IGER: And he had had
cancer a few years earlier.
It was announced and
he was operated on
and he had declared
himself cured.
It was a form of pancreatic
cancer that was operable,
and this was a few
years after that.
And nothing had been said
more about his illness
or about his medical
condition because it
was assumed he was fine.
And so he said to
me, I'm telling you
something only Laurene Jobs,
his wife, and my doctor
knows and you can't
tell anybody else.
I'm thinking, this has got
to be momentous in some form.
Were you thinking then that
the cancer had come back?
Well, when he said, "doctor"--
You thought--
ROBERT IGER: --I immediately
thought something's bad here.
And he said, I need you to
know my cancer has come back.
He gave me some details.
And I said, why are
you telling me this?
And he said, I'm giving you a
chance to get out of the deal.
I said, get out of the deal?
And I looked at my watch.
There was a clock
ticking at this point
because we had announced
the press conference
and we were going kind
of live to the world
to tell everybody
about this deal.
And I thought, my goodness,
in less than an hour,
we have to tell everybody this
and what am I going to do?
I had no idea what my
responsibilities were.
He was becoming a
member of the board
and our largest shareholder.
Even though we
were buying Pixar,
we weren't buying Steve Jobs.
And I said, you need
to tell me more.
And he told me that
he had a 50/50 chance
of living for five years.
And I said, can
you tell me more?
And he told me it had
metastasized to his liver.
And I think I even asked,
give me some more perspective.
And he said, my son
is in high school.
He's going to graduate
in four years.
I'm going to be
at his graduation.
His son, Reed.
I thought, wow,
there's something very
powerful in that statement.
That he's so determined
to live and it
was very meaningful to me.
And it came so from
deep within him
and I could tell he
was emotional about it.
And I said, look, I have no idea
what my legal responsibilities
are here.
You have my word I
won't tell people.
I don't really know what
the right thing to do here
is from a corporate perspective
but my sense is that we
should go through with this.
I'm not going to back out.
I appreciate the opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
And--
It said a lot about
him and about you.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting I
haven't really thought much
about what it said about me
other than maybe I just--
it didn't--
you know, it was
a difficult moment
because even though I
wasn't that attached
to him at that point,
this guy was telling me
that he was very ill.
- Yeah.
ROBERT IGER: It
couldn't be good.
That he was dying.
And he was talking
about his kids
and I felt terrible for
him, so I had that going on.
But I wasn't that
concerned about the,
I'll call it the corporate side.
That was early 2006 and he
died in October of 2011.
So he made the graduation?
He made the graduation.
He made that and a lot more.
What he did in that period
of time, in terms of his life
and at Apple, is
just extraordinary.
And the heroism
that he exhibited
in that period of time
with such incredible pain.
And then I love this moment
when Laurene Jobs says to you,
she tells you about the
moment Steve tells her--
Yeah.
--that he has told you.
And she says, can we trust him?
And Steve Jobs says about
you, I love that guy.
Yes, she told me
that at the cemetery.
OPRAH WINFREY: Mm-hmm.
