Dr. Phil shares the biggest lesson he's learned from his 20-year friendship with billionaire Oprah

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Dr. Phil McGraw and Oprah Winfrey in a 2001 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Phil McGraw met billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey when she hired his Texas-based trial consulting firm to help her prepare for a defamation trial in which she was the defendant.

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Winfrey, who won the trial, was reportedly so impressed with McGraw, a psychologist most commonly known as Dr. Phil, that she later invited him on to her popular talk show.

He soon was offered a weekly segment in which he discussed relationships and life strategies - and McGraw later went on to have his own program, the Dr. Phil show, which is now in its fourteenth season.

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Business Insider recently asked McGraw to share the biggest lesson he's learned from Winfrey, who he still considers a "dear friend" 20 years after meeting her. He said:

I think the most important thing I've learned from Oprah is the impact of a generosity of spirit. Oprah has what I call a 'health engendering personality.' When she's around people, they feel better about themselves than they did before she got there. And being able to be around people, interact with people, in a way that allows them to feel better about who they are when you leave than they did when you got there, is a real talent. It's a a real great goal to have - and she does that in spades.

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