Barbara Walters

She was first married to a business executive Robert Henry Katz in 1955. The marriage was very short lived.

She married Lee Guber, a theatrical producer and theater owner in 1963. They adopted one daughter and divorced in 1976.

Her third marriage was to Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar television in 1981. They divorced in 1984 only to remarry in 1986. They again divorced in 1992.

She was born to Jewish parents Dena and Louis Walters in Boston. Her father worked as a Broadway producer and was also the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino.

Because of her father’s profession she grew up in close proximity to celebrities, thus she was never in awe of them.

She attended Lawrence School in Brookline. Her family later moved to New York City where she attended high school at Birch Wathen School and graduated in 1947.

She enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College from where she earned her B.A. in English.

After college she moved to New York City to look for work. She worked for a year at a small advertising agency before bagging a job at the NBC network affiliate in New York City, WNBT-TV.

In 1953, she produced a 15- minute children’s program, ‘Ask the Camera’ which was directed by Roone Arledge. In 1955 she became a writer of ‘The Morning Show’ at CBS. She joined Tex McCrary Inc. as a publicist and then worked for a few years as a writer at the ‘Redbook’ magazine.

She joined NBC’s ‘The Today Show’ as a writer and researcher in 1961 and soon became the show’s regular ‘Today Girl’. During those times women were given only lighter assignments like the weather to report.

In defying the traditions of that era, she began developing and writing her own reports and interviews. She became the first female co-host of ‘The Today Show’ in 1974.

She was teamed up with Harry Reasoner as a co-anchor on the ‘ABC Evening News in 1976-78. However, the two had a very difficult working relationship as Reasoner did not like having a female co-anchor.

She worked as the co-host and producer of the television newsmagazine ‘20/20’ for 25 years from 1979 till 2004. The program follows a format similar to CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ but focuses more on human interest stories rather than on political issues.