Barbara Walters

Background

Barbara Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 25, 1929, to Dena and Louis Lou Walters. Her parents were Jewish and descended from Russian Empire immigrants. Her paternal grandfather, Abraham Isaac Warmwater, was born in ód, Poland, immigrated to the U.K. and changed his name to Abraham Walters from the Warmwasser family line. She earned a B.A. in English from Sarah Lawrence College in 1951. After working for a short time in an advertising firm, she was the publicity director’s assistant at an NBC-affiliated television station in New York City. Here, she developed her writing and producing skills for television. She was a producer and writer for news and public affairs for the CBS television network. In 1961, she started writing for the well-known NBC morning program Today.

Although Walters started on The Today Show, writing and producing segments of women’s interest stories, her popularity with viewers led to Walters getting more airtime. She joined the program as co-host in 1974, becoming the first woman to hold that position on an American news program. In 1976, Walters paved the path for other women in broadcasting by becoming the first female co-anchor of the ABC Evening News show. From 1979 through 2004, she was a producer and co-host of the ABC news magazine 20/20. She then gained fame for an annual ABC broadcast called Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People. During that time, she interviewed every sitting U.S. president and first lady, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. The View was an ABC daytime chat show she developed, co-hosted, and produced. She appeared on the program from 1997 to 2014. She continued to present special reports for 20/20, Investigation Discovery, and in 2015, she made her final on-air appearance for ABC News.

In her lifetime, Walters has married three different men four times. Robert Henry Katz, her first husband, was a business executive and a former Navy captain. They wed at The Plaza Hotel in New York City on June 20, 1955, and their union was later annulled. On December 8, 1963, she married Lee Guber, a producer and theater owner. They divorced in 1976. Their only child, Jacqueline Dena Guber, was adopted in 1968, the year she was born. Merv Adelson, her third husband, was the head of Lorimar Television. They were wed in 1981, divorced in 1984 after three years, remarried in 1986, and divorced again in 1992.