There are few American journalists more revered than Lesley Stahl. Loyal viewers of 60 Minutes
have seen her in action for decades, but there's still plenty about her life that most
people probably don't know. Keep watching to discover the truth about Lesley Stahl.
When Lesley Stahl began her career working as a reporter for a Boston TV station in the early 70s,
the notion of a female journalist was still seen as something of a novelty.
But that didn't hold her back. When she learned that all three American
networks were seeking women for their news divisions thanks to affirmative action
programs encouraging employers to hire women and minorities, she jumped at the opportunity.
"The three networks, I was told, were desperate to get women and minorities to put on camera."
In 2017, Stahl told the Detroit Free Press,
"I was definitely, positively, no mistake about it, hired because of affirmative
action [...] It was clear what they were doing, and in fact, the affirmative action
hires were really brought in as apprentices. I was hired to work in the Washington bureau
with Bernie Shaw and Connie Chung. We called ourselves the affirmative-action babies."
According to Stahl, she and her female colleagues never felt resentful. Instead, as she admitted,
"We were just happy to be in the door."
There were some indignities along the way, though, like the women being given
children-size desks, for example. But Stahl nevertheless felt supported. As she put it,
"I felt that my bosses wanted us to succeed and they put some effort into bringing us along and
helping us. I really felt they wanted me to make it. I didn’t feel anybody was out to put me down."
Struggling to make a mark as a woman in a man's world didn't come without
sacrifices for Stahl. For example, when her daughter Taylor was born in 1977,
she decided not to breastfeed, as she didn't want to be perceived as being on
a different level than her male colleagues. As she explained to The Hollywood Reporter in 2019,
"The men didn't breastfeed, we're not going to show up at the office
and be different from the men — we're just not."
The way that Stahl saw it, she and her contemporaries had managed to kick open a door,
and they were determined to keep it open for the future women
continuing to blaze a trail in their wake. As she put it,
"My generation felt that we needed to prove that we were exactly like
the men in every way. That we were as available, could go anywhere,
cover any subject, do it as well as the men. We were the provers.
Despite all the achievements that Lesley Stahl and other pioneering women have made in broadcast
journalism since the 70s, she believes that there's still plenty of room for improvement
towards achieving true gender equality. As she told The Highlands Current in 2018,
"It's been slow going. In my naivete, I thought, the door's open, we'll prove
ourselves, and we're on our way. We proved ourselves and still had to climb mountains.
Maybe it was necessary that we had to earn our way, and maybe it had to take years,
because no one can say we jumped the line because of affirmative action."
To cite an example, she recalled a story that she'd worked on for
60 Minutes about income inequality. As she noted,
"It's stunning to learn that waitresses are tipped less than waiters are.
There's something inherent in the system that pays women less. It's hard to change that,
but the pressure needs to stay on, and we need more women in the executive suites."
Since 1977, Stahl has been married to fellow journalist Aaron Latham. He's probably best
known for writing the screenplay for the 1980 John Travolta film Urban Cowboy as well as the Esquire
article that it's based on. The couple had to deal with a big adjustment in their lives when Latham
was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which made it difficult for him to type and write.
So Stahl utilized her decades of experience as an investigative reporter to find solutions.
Eventually, she discovered a Brooklyn gym that featured therapeutic boxing workouts
specially designed to strengthen Parkinson's patients. As she told Brain & Life in 2018,
"From the very beginning, boxing had a dramatic, positive effect on Aaron.
It not only helped Aaron physically [with the stiffness and tremors],
but it did a lot for his confidence. He goes religiously, twice a week."
Latham himself has also discussed the benefits of
Rock Steady Boxing. In a 2015 segment on CBS Sunday Morning, he explained,
"Boxing's just the opposite of Parkinson's. Instead of to shrink you,
everything's designed to pump you up. First of all, you get to put on these great gloves.
It gives you enormous, giant hands and a different attitude toward the world.
You get your physical courage back and your mental courage seems to kinda come along."
"Well, you did great. I always wanted to shake your hand." "To the winner!" "Go, winner!"
Lesley Stahl has never been one to talk publicly about how much money she makes. But there was a
time when her paycheck and its relationship to the exorbitant salary of another female journalist at
CBS News created some awkward headlines, thanks to author Sheila Weller's network news tell-all
The News Sorority. One section of the book covers the arrival of Katie Couric at CBS in
2006, when the former Today anchor was hired to anchor the CBS Evening News.
Couric's astronomical salary, a reported $15 million per year, led the network's news division
to ask its 60 Minutes correspondents to take pay cuts to free up some money. According to Weller's
book, Morley Safer was expected to earn 30% less, while Stahl was asked to take a cut of $500,000.
Weller didn't verify whether or not Stahl accepted that request, but it's safe to say
from this incident that gender politics still play a very big part in broadcast journalism
in much the same way that they did during Stahl's early years in the industry.
When women become grandmothers, they'll often develop a habit of showing off baby pictures
to their friends. But Lesley Stahl is not your typical grandma. So instead of just
passing around photos of her grandkids, she decided to write a book about the experience.
Published in 2016, Becoming Grandma took Stahl out of the hard-news lane that she was famous for
and into something fluffier, while still allowing her to fully utilize
all the journalistic skills that she's built up over the course of decades.
The book actually kind of came about by accident, as a publisher took Stahl
to lunch in order to gauge her interest in writing a book on a very different topic:
60 Minutes. But she wasn't so keen on that idea. As she recalled during a book-signing appearance,
"I told him if I wrote a honest book about the show, I would be fired. And if I wasn't honest,
the book would be dull. Then he suggested that I write a book about grandparenting instead."
As Stahl was a grandmother herself, she became intrigued and began researching
the topic. As she explained to the crowd at the book-signing event,
"Grandparents don't have to be told to love their grandchildren. It just happens. No
one can really explain the feeling of being a grandmother. It is just that indescribable."
"We are meant to be in those children's lives. We are meant to be- That's why we exist."
Lesley Stahl is a lot of things, but it's fair to say that "Star Trek expert" is not one of them.
She proved that in a 2016 appearance on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, during which host
Peter Sagal tested her on her knowledge of the venerable science-fiction franchise.
She wound up flubbing the first question, which asked whether it was ventriloquist Edgar Bergen,
comedienne Lucille Ball, or the dolphin star of TV's Flipper who was responsible for the show
coming into existence. Stahl incorrectly guessed Bergen, but it turned out that it
was actually Ball, whose production company Desilu had greenlit the original Trek series.
Stahl fared better on the second question, as she correctly guessed the reason why the
show almost didn't have a second season. It wasn't because of the cast's allergies
to their StarFleet uniforms or the proposed addition of an alien in a bikini, but rather,
what was described as "an insane diva catfight" between stars William Shatner
and Leonard Nimoy. Stahl then botched the final question when she wrongly guessed that series
creator Gene Roddenberry hired Nimoy to play emotionless Vulcan Mr. Spock because he, quote,
"had no emotional range as an actor." Clearly, Stahl was not the most logical trivia participant.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been covered extensively by 60 Minutes. And for Lesley Stahl,
the novel coronavirus became more than just a news story when she tested positive herself.
In the May 3 edition of the show, she revealed to viewers that she and some other members of the 60
Minutes team had contracted COVID-19. It seemed to affect each person who had it in a different way,
with one having almost no symptoms while others had the full range of symptoms.
For Stahl, her symptoms were severe enough that she needed to be hospitalized. As she recounted,
"After two weeks at home in bed, weak, fighting pneumonia, and really scared,
I went to the hospital. I found an overworked, nearly overwhelmed staff.
Every one of them kind, sympathetic, gentle and caring from the moment I arrived until
the moment days later when I was wheeled out through a gauntlet of cheering medical workers.
In the face of so much death, they celebrate their triumphs."
"This valiant army in scrubs and masks were not just doing a job. They were fulfilling a mission,
answering the call."
The list of luminaries that Lesley Stahl has interviewed over decades is beyond impressive.
She's chatted with entertainers, politicians, and plenty of other newsmakers. In 2018, she was asked
by Nantucket Magazine which world leader proved to be the most surprising, and she revealed,
"Probably then-President Sarkozy of France,
who you know walked out on me. He turned his microphone off and stormed off."
Stahl was shocked to see a world leader become so emotional when she asked about his marriage,
which happened to be falling apart at the time. As she recalled,
"He said a vulgar word in French that was
so vulgar that the interpreter wouldn’t tell me what it was."
As for the American presidents that she's covered, Stahl admitted that she found both
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to both be, quote, "aloof" in their own ways,
while George H.W. Bush was far more gregarious. As she recalled of the 41st President,
"He loved people. He bounced around the White House. He'd come into the pressroom. I kept
bumping into him. In those days, reporters could roam almost all the way up to the Oval
Office door [...] I had already known him when he was running the Republican Party,
so I had a personal relationship with him, and I respected him enormously."
"Integrity and class seemed to matter to this man very much, and you saw that."
"It was innate. Either it was innate or his mother pounded it into him."
Ahead of each presidential election, it's a 60 Minutes tradition to interview the presidential
and vice presidential candidates from each party for a special episode. The 2020 edition was
especially memorable, as it went spectacularly off the rails during Lesley Stahl's headline-making
interview with then-President Donald Trump, during which she continually refuted his unfounded
allegations about election fraud. After he claimed that his campaign was spied on, she responded,
"You know, this is 60 Minutes. And we can't put on things we can't verify."
Trump appeared annoyed as he said,
"Your first statement was, 'Are you ready for tough questions?'"
So when Stahl asked him if he was in fact ready, he responded,
"That's no way to talk. That's no way to talk."
Soon thereafter, he abruptly ended the interview and walked off. It was then reported
by TMZ soon after the interview that CBS hired round-the-clock security for Stahl and her family
after one of her family members received a death threat related to her Trump interview.
Clearly, the life of a journalist remains both quite fraught for Lesley Stahl.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.