Rebecca Costa

EVERY time Stacy Igel concludes a meeting with her staff, she ends it roughly the same way: "O.K., I'll see you on Oprah!"

There's just one hitch: Ms. Igel, the founder and creative director of Boy Meets Girl, a clothing company in Manhattan, has not been invited to appear on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Not yet. But "I am always talking about Oprah," she said the other day. "Over the years I saw her interviewing all of these designers, Tory Burch, Marc Jacobs."

Ms. Igel, who has adopted the slogan "Passion. Drive. Oprah!" as a personal and professional mantra (you'll find it on the Facebook page of her company), routinely pitches a producer at the show with whom she went to college. And she is considering having her brother-in-law, who she said lives in the same building as Ms. Winfrey's close friend Gayle King, slip Ms. King some Boy Meets Girl merchandise — though the idea makes her uneasy.

"That's a little aggressive for me," she said.

Aggression, however, is probably warranted. The clock is ticking for those who envision themselves as the next Phil McGraw, Dr. Mehmet Oz, or Rachael Ray — all stars made significantly more luminous by Ms. Winfrey's enthusiastic on-air endorsement. With the show's finale at the end of May 2011 (some call it the Oprah-calypse), and only a limited number of guest appearances up for grabs, the would-be chosen have their work cut out for them.

"They're scrambling," said Susan Harrow, a California-based media coach who for decades has received so many "get me on Oprah" requests from writers, entrepreneurs, and even a Mafioso's son, that she decided to write a handbook, "The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah," which she sells for $99 (you read that correctly).

Desire to be on the show, which will be in reruns from about June through Sept. 9, has intensified since Ms. Winfrey announced in November 2009 that it would end. Ms. Harrow said she hears a lot of "Can you get me on before Christmas?"

"The Oprah Winfrey Show," which made its debut nationally in 1986, has become regarded as an express lane to the American dream. Sales climbed at once-little-known companies like Spanx, maker of the now-ubiquitous body-sucking undergarments, and at Philosophy, a skin care brand, after Ms. Winfrey mentioned their products on the show, which is watched by about 40 million people a week in the United States. For authors in particular she has been a fairy godmother. Publishers Weekly said last year that Ms. Winfrey "turned 63 books into best sellers" and that "one publishing insider estimated that Oprah's selections alone generated $500 million in sales for the industry."

Other beneficiaries include the fitness trainer Bob Greene; the designer Chris Madden; chefs like Art Smith and Rosie Daley; organizational experts, including Julie Morgenstern and Peter Walsh; and countless authors, like Eckhart Tolle. Regular guests of Ms. Winfrey's show — Suze Orman, Mr. McGraw, Ms. Ray, Dr. Oz and, most recently, the interior designer Nate Berkus — became only more celebrated. They have also become the next generation of talk show hosts.

Ms. Winfrey, 56, is not vanishing. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, a new cable channel she created with her production company and Discovery Communications, is scheduled to make its debut on Jan. 1. But when her stage goes dark after 25 seasons, so will a spotlight sharply focused on entrepreneurs, writers and self-help gurus, and with it, a method that generations used to calibrate career success.

"When Johnny Carson left, all the stand-up comedians in the world were lamenting because being on Carson was a dream for so many people," said Cindy Ratzlaff, president of Brand New Brand You, a marketing and media strategy company. "And this is the same thing. Having your Oprah moment is the same as stand-ups wishing they had their Johnny Carson moment."

And having an Oprah moment has never seemed more tantalizingly elusive.

Like most authors, Rebecca D. Costa — who wrote "The Watchman's Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse" (Vanguard Press, October 2010) — wants to get her book into Ms. Winfrey's hands. So far Ms. Costa, a sociobiologist in San Francisco, has received testimonials from other bigwigs including Donald J. Trump; Trudie Styler, the actress and wife of Sting; Tina Brown, the founder of The Daily Beast and former editor of magazines including Vanity Fair and Talk; the former senator Bill Bradley; and Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin Group.

"It was easier for me to get a hold of Sir Richard Branson than it was for me to get my book in front of Oprah," she said. "Now as I understand it, he's floating on an island in the Caribbean somewhere!"

Ms. Costa (whose book explores why great civilizations fail and what can be done to stop it from happening again) is hoping Sir Branson will run into Ms. Winfrey and say, "By the way, Oprah, did you read this book?" But she is not overly optimistic.

"I'm standing in line next to a guy that has a cookbook and somebody that's got an exercise video," Ms. Costa said.

For Tina Marie Frawley, a novelist in Mount Pleasant, S.C., the wake-up call came in November 2009. "The news was out that Oprah was going off the air and total panic set in," said Ms. Frawley, 29, who has been plodding along on a work of historical fiction for six years in between college and two waitressing jobs. "I said, 'I need to get myself on the couch with Oprah,' " Ms. Frawley continued, "and I had at that point just over a year to do it." She began chronicling her efforts to swiftly finish her novel, tentatively titled "The Princess of the Underground Railroad," on a blog with a name that says it all: Oprahby2011.com.