Diane Sawyer

In the past, Diane Sawyer had dated President Nixon’s aide Frank Gannon and American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. She met film and theatre director, actor, and producer Mike Nichols in Paris in 1986, when she was 40 years old. He was 54 and a prominent name in his business. They married on April 29, 1988. While Sawyer is the stepmother to Nichols’ two daughters and a son from previous marriages, she does not have any children of her own. On November 19, 2014, Nichols died of a heart attack at the age of 83.

Born on December 22, 1945, in Glasgow, Kentucky, Diane is the younger of two daughters of Jean W. (née Dunagan) and Erbon Powers "Tom" Sawyer. Her mother was an elementary school teacher while her father was a former US Navy captain during World War II. Her older sister’s name is Linda.

Reflecting the cultural melting pot that America is, her ancestors came from all across Europe; she is of mixed English-Irish-Scottish-German descent. Her family moved to Louisville when she was only a few months old, and there, her father quickly became a prominent member of the community as a Republican politician and leader. At the time of his death in a car accident in 1969, he was serving as the Kentucky's Jefferson County Judge/Executive.

Sawyer was an active student at her Seneca High School in Louisville; she was the editor-in-chief for the school newspaper ‘The Arrow’ and was involved in many artistic endeavours.

In 1963, she represented the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the annual national America's Junior Miss scholarship pageant. She won the pageantry by demonstrating her poise and by writing an essay comparing the music of the north and the south during the Civil War period.

She served as America’s Junior Miss between 1962 and 1965 and travelled across the country endorsing the Coca-Cola Pavilion at the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair. Her experience was so overwhelmingly good that she continues to support the program even today.

Diane Sawyer landed the job of a weather forecaster right out of college, but soon grew tired, finding it boring. Her promotion to the general assignment post did not help and she moved to Washington, D.C. for better opportunities.

There were none, at least not in broadcasting, prompting her to switch career and apply for a job in government offices. She gave multiple interviews and eventually served Jerry Warren as an assistant. Her rise to the post of staff assistant to President Nixon was swift.

In 1973, Sawyer, along with Larry Speakes, was given the task to prove former White House Counsel John Dean’s testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee regarding Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up as a lie.

She would continue to serve Nixon faithfully through his resignation and subsequent Nixon-Ford transition period. She helped him get ready for his famous set of interviews with David Frost as well as to author ‘RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon’.

Returning to Washington, D.C. and to broadcast journalism in 1978, she was employed as a general-assignment reporter for CBS News, and later co-anchored the 90-minute-long morning news show. The program debuted on September 28, 1981.

Throughout her illustrious career, newsmakers have trusted Diane Sawyer to share their stories and she in turn, has interviewed them with a critical sincerity that is becoming gradually rare in her profession. In recent years, she has interviewed, among others, Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner, Malala Yousafzai, and Hilary Clinton.