CHICAGO — Teresa Woorman has two cats, a pair of rescued Himalayans with long silver manes and tiny pink noses. Snow White, 10, is “queen of the house,” Woorman says — thrives on structure, detests loud noises. Oscar, a year younger, follows his older sister around the house, bugging her to snuggle when she wants to be left alone. (Oh — she also has a dog, a Pomeranian named Gatsby, “but he thinks he’s a cat, too.”) The 32-year-old member of the Maryland House of Delegates lives with her pets and her husband in Bethesda.
By Kara Voght
Woorman is, in other words, a childless cat lady — which is exactly what she looked like when TV producers for the Democratic National Convention cut to her during Oprah Winfrey’s speech Wednesday night. The entertainment mogul had been talking about the Democratic spirit of helping one another — the idea of rescuing someone from a “house on fire” without a thought to their race, religion or sexual orientation.
“No, we just try to do the best we can to save them — and if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out, too,” Winfrey said.
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She paused as her punchline — a callback to JD Vance’s now-infamous line from a 2021 Fox News interview — ignited a burst of laughter across the arena. Then, there was Woorman, with a curly half-ponytail and cobalt silk brocade dress, staring into space and nodding. Fans of “The Wendy Williams Show” compared the moment to the antics of Williams’s “shady cameraman,” who was notorious for cutting to a random audience member to illustrate Williams’s often unflattering point.
The United Center’s giant screens broadcast only what’s happening onstage, so Woorman had no idea her thousand-yard stare had been beamed into millions of homes. A few minutes later, a delegate behind her tapped her shoulder. “Teresa, you’re going viral!” the delegate said.
Whatever the effect of the visual juxtapositions, Woorman took it in stride. “I was already really excited about this whole week,” she says. “This has made it even more fun. It added a little bit of quirkiness.”
Her anticipation had already been building when Winfrey took the stage. (“I grew up watching Oprah,” Woorman said, then did an impression of Winfrey’s iconic giveaway moment: You get a car! You get a car!) Winfrey’s appearance had been kept secret; rumors had been circulating among the Maryland delegation that she would show up to introduce the state’s governor, Wes Moore, who had hosted a show on Winfrey’s network, OWN, before his 2022 election.
What had caused Woorman’s pondering gaze? She was thinking about Winfrey’s analogy — about the burning building, the people inside. “I remembered the faces and the words of the people who spoke of the Republican National Convention,” Woorman says. “I wasn’t sure if they would rush into a burning building to save someone like me.”
“I was literally taking it in, focusing on what it was they were saying,” Woorman adds.
She put an end to the speculation about her state of mind with a post on X. “I’m having a great time at the DNC,” she wrote. “And damn right this childless cat lady is 100% disgusted by J.D. Vance in general and 100% behind @KamalaHarris and @GovTimWalz! Also I may be childless but I do hope that’s not a permanent condition, thanks!”
So far, Woorman has enjoyed the reactions to her five seconds of fame, laughing along with the online Greek chorus of convention viewers. She loves sharing a distinction with her beloved Taylor Swift, the world’s most famous childless cat lady. And she’s taking cues from Vice President Kamala Harris, whose embrace of her big, hearty laugh has seemingly neutralized GOP attacks on it.
“It’s about owning it,” she says. “That’s who I am, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
