Katie Couric

Katherine Anne Couric (born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and presenter.

She is founder of Katie Couric Media, a multimedia news and production company.

She also publishes a daily newsletter, Wake Up Call.

She enrolled at her father's alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 1975, and was a Delta Delta Delta sorority sister.

Couric served in several positions at UVA's daily newspaper, The Cavalier Daily.

During her fourth year at UVA, Couric was chosen to live as Senior Resident of The Lawn, the heart of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village.

She graduated in 1979, with a bachelor's degree in American Studies.

Couric's first job in 1979 was at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C., later joining CNN as an assignment editor.

Between 1984 and 1986, she worked as a general-assignment reporter for the then-CBS affiliate WTVJ in Miami, Florida.

During the following two years, she reported for WRC-TV, the NBC owned- and -operated station in Washington, D.C., work which earned her an Associated Press award and an Emmy.

She worked for NBC News from 1989 to 2006, CBS News from 2006 to 2011, and ABC News from 2011 to 2014.

In 2021, she appeared as a guest host for the game show Jeopardy!, the first woman to host the flagship American version of the show in its history.

Couric joined NBC News in 1989 as Deputy Pentagon Correspondent.

From 1989 to 1991, Couric was an anchor substitute.

She filled in for Bryant Gumbel as host of Today; Jane Pauley and Deborah Norville as co-anchor of Today; Boyd Matson, Garrick Utley, Mary Alice Williams, and Maria Shriver as co-host of Sunday Today; and Connie Chung, Bob Jamieson, John Palmer, Norville, Faith Daniels, Margaret Larson and Ann Curry as anchor of the former NBC News program NBC News at Sunrise.

She also subbed for Daniels, Norville, and John Palmer as the news anchor on Today.

In 1989, Couric joined Today as national political correspondent, becoming a substitute co-host in February 1991, when Norville went on maternity leave.

From 1989 to 1993, Couric also filled in for Maria Shriver and for Garrick Utley and later Brian Williams and John Seigenthaler on the Weekend Edition of NBC Nightly News.

Norville did not return and Couric became permanent co-anchor on April 5, 1991.

During Couric's Today interview with presidential candidate Ross Perot on June 11, 1992, viewer phone calls were included.

She deflected his bewilderment when a phone caller slipped the following question by the program's technical crew: “Have you ever had the desire to mind-meld with Howard Stern’s penis?”

In 1994, she became co-anchor of Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric—an evening time weekly TV newsmagazine with Tom Brokaw—which was later terminated and folded into part of Dateline NBC, where her reports appeared regularly and she was named the anchor.

In 2004, Couric was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Katherine Anne Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Jewish, and converted to Presbyterianism before the marriage.

Couric's maternal grandparents, Bert Hene and Clara L. Frohsin, were the children of Jewish emigrants from Germany.

Couric's father had French, English, Scottish, and German ancestry.

She was raised Presbyterian.

She remained at Today and NBC News for fifteen years until May 31, 2006, when she announced that she would be going to CBS to anchor the CBS Evening News, becoming the first solo female anchor of the "Big Three" weekday nightly news broadcasts.

While at NBC, Couric occasionally filled in for Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News.

Couric's 2011 book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives, was a New York Times bestseller.

In addition to her roles in television news, Couric hosted Katie, a syndicated daytime talk show produced by Disney–ABC Domestic Television from September 2012 to June 2014.

Some of her most important presenting roles include co-host of Today, anchor of the CBS Evening News, and as a correspondent for 60 Minutes.

From 2013 to 2017, she was Yahoo's Global News Anchor.

Couric has been a television host at all of the Big Three television networks in the United States, and in her early career she was an assignment editor for CNN.

Couric returned to NBC to co-host the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies with Mike Tirico, and to provide additional Winter Olympic coverage and athlete interviews.

During the opening ceremony she suggested, erroneously, that the Dutch use their skates as a normal mode of transportation during wintertime, prompting criticism and bemusement from the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands and others.

Couric apologized that her intended compliment did not "come out" as intended, which the Embassy accepted, and invited her to the Netherlands for a tour.

In a report for Today, she traced her patrilineal ancestry back to a French orphan who immigrated to the U.S. in the 19th century, and became a broker in the cotton business.

Couric attended Arlington Public Schools: Jamestown Elementary, Williamsburg Middle School, and Yorktown High School, and was a cheerleader.

As a high school student, she was an intern at Washington, D.C. all-news radio station WAVA.