Katie Couric is one of the most important TV anchors of the modern television era, hosting news programs on each of the Big Three television networks in the United States – NBC, ABC, and CBS – and becoming the first solo female anchor of a major network evening news program.
For many, however, she will always be known as the co-host of NBC’s morning program, Today Show, with Matt Lauer from 1997 to 2006, one of the longest-running and most successful anchor teams in morning television history, despite the later controversies.
Her exit was a watercooler moment in American pop culture history, and Katie has now made a rare comment on her exit in 2006, calling it “bittersweet” and acknowledging the intense media scrutiny she faced.
“It was a lot of attention on this decision. I remember it being bittersweet. I loved my time on the Today show,” she told Variety. “And then, of course, came all the attention of going to CBS. Because of the historic nature, as the first female to do that job as a solo anchor, a soft launch was pretty impossible.”
© WireImageKatie revealed that she knew the attention had broken through when she was serving at a food bank with her daughters, and one man from an underserved community approached her to ask if she was really loving the NBC program.
“And I thought, ‘Wow, I guess this story has gotten around,'” she said.
Matt continued to host the morning program on NBC, but in November 2017, he was fired after the network received “a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,” and other victims soon came forward.
In her 2021 memoir, Going There, Katie called his behaviour “disgusting,” “abusive,” and “callous”, but admitted that she had “heard whispers” over the years they had worked together. She also shared her devastation at learning that the Matt she had worked with for over a decade was not the full picture.
© Corbis via Getty ImagesKatie’s tenure never took off at CBS, which remained third in the ratings, and she left after five years. She has now admitted she was “naive” to think she could push boundaries at the network.
“I have ideas of things that I might have done differently,” she shared. “I never realized what a traditional news operation CBS was, and what a traditional format an evening news broadcast was — and is. I was naive to think that we could do anything more than really play with the edges of the newscast.”
© Getty ImagesKatie, who will turn 70 in January 2027, is now the founder of Katie Couric Media and also publishes a daily newsletter, Wake Up Call.
Her first husband, Jay Monahan, passed away from colon Cancer in 1998 at the age of 42, and her sister Emily passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2000. Katie was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 and has become a powerful advocate for cancer screening, co-founding the non-profit Stand Up 2 Cancer.
On June 21, 2014, Katie married financier John Molner after a three-year relationship.
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