Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts, who's often credited as a trailblazer for women in the
press, passed away from complications of breast cancer at the age of 75.
A living legend, this longtime print, radio, and TV journalist also has deep roots in U.S.
politics.
This is the untold truth of Cokie Roberts.
Growing up in Congress
As the daughter of two U.S. Representatives, Cokie Roberts' earliest memories were of Congress.
She was born and raised around the hallways of the legislative branch, and ultimately
dedicated her life to reporting on it.
Roberts' father, Hale Boggs, had a lengthy career in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He was elected as a representative for Louisiana in 1940, and became the House Majority Leader
in 1971.
He was such a prominent political figure that, according to the House of Representatives
archives, it was expected that he'd one day take on the role of speaker of the House,
but he passed away before he got the chance.
According to the House's archives, Roberts had a wealth of positive memories from her
childhood in Washington, including riding the Senate subway, attending the Opening Day
of Congress with her father in the late 1940s, and trying to persuade her dad to publicly
support the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In many ways, the Capitol was always full of surprises.
"You could run into corridors and come upon blind doors or come upon balconies you didn't
know were there."
Her mother was a pioneer
Cokie Roberts followed in the footsteps of her mother, Corinne "Lindy" Boggs, who was
a trailblazer for women in Washington, D.C.
According to her biography in the U.S. House of Representatives archive, Boggs was the
first woman to ever represent Louisiana in the House, but she initially moved to the
nation's capitol to serve as chief political adviser for her husband, Hale Boggs.
Lindy started her career in journalism, as an editor of the Newcomb College of Tulane
University newspaper, where she initially met Hale, who served as general editor.
They got married before Hale graduated from law school, and Lindy embarked on a career
supporting her husband's campaigns and political life while raising their three children.
After Hale's tragic death and three decades of serving as his "political confidante, strategist,
and surrogate campaigner," Lindy won a special election to fill her husband's empty seat.
She ended up serving in the House for 18 years.
Armed Services Chairman F. Edward Hebert once called her, quote, "the only widow I know
who is really qualified, damn qualified, to take over."
Her father disappeared
Cokie Roberts' father, Hale Boggs, served in the U.S. House of Representatives for around
three decades before his tragic disappearance in October 1972.
According to Politico, the Congressman was serving as the House majority leader when
his plane disappeared during a campaign trip somewhere between Anchorage and Juneau, Alaska.
At the time, the search and rescue operation was the largest in U.S. history.
Politico reported that it involved, quote, "40 military aircraft, 50 civilian planes,
a search grid of 325,000 square miles, and more than 3,600 hours of search time."
Unfortunately, the wreckage wasn't found, and the search was called off after 39 days.
Boggs was presumed dead, and Congress subsequently passed a law requiring emergency locator transmitters
to be installed in all U.S. civil aircraft.
Boggs' death was subject to a number of conspiracy theories, most of which involve his role with
the Warren Commission, which investigated the 1963 assassination of President John F.
Kennedy.
He posthumously won re-election.
She decided against a political career
Cokie Roberts' parents weren't the only ones in the journalist's family with political
ambitions.
It pretty much became the family trade.
Cokie's older brother Thomas Boggs, who reportedly coined the nickname Cokie because he couldn't
pronounce her preferred name, Corinne, was a lobbyist.
Her sister Barbara Boggs Sigmund was the mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Roberts admitted that she's, quote, "the only
person in [her] original nuclear family who didn't run for Congress", and her mother is
the only one who never lost an election.
But there's a very good reason that the famed political commentator decided to steer clear
of that career path.
She didn't want it to interfere with her husband, Steve Roberts', dream.
She said:
"Steve and I met when we were 18 and 19.
He was always going to be a journalist from the time he was, like, nine or 10 years old.
So, it would have been very hard on him if I had gone into politics.
I have always felt semi-guilty about it.
But I've sort of assuaged my guilt by writing about it and feeling like I'm educating people
about the government and how to be good voters and good citizens."
Her husband was her mentor
Cokie Roberts and her husband Steve, a former New York Times reporter, were married for
53 years.
According to a New York Times profile, the pair met in 1962 at a political event hosted
by Ohio State University.
At the time, they were both in college, Cokie at Wellesley College and Steven at Harvard.
She initially impressed her future husband by speaking at the conference, because, at
the time, women weren't typically allowed to speak at those events.
The young students ended up marrying in 1966 after Cokie, who was 22 years old and sick
of waiting, told Steven that she'd move to California if he didn't put a ring on it.
Steven remained a major source of support for Cokie throughout their marriage.
Though she told the New York Times that she, quote, "didn't think [she'd] have a highly
successful career" when they tied the knot, Steven ended up serving as her mentor when
she first started out.
In an oral history project developed by the House of Representatives, Cokie admitted,
"I had always been a good writer, and so I started reporting and writing.
He was a big help to me, and we did a lot together."
A massive backyard wedding
Cokie and Steve had been together since they were teenagers, and after they decided to
tie the knot, the pair threw the most gigantic, low-key wedding imaginable.
According to a profile in the New York Times, they skipped out on a church wedding, because
they were jumping into an interfaith union.
Instead, they wed at Roberts' family home in Bethesda, Maryland, where the couple still
lived as of 2017.
Roberts told the New York Times:
"We had a Jewish Catholic marriage and had to overcome some hurdles.
So we married in my backyard instead of a house of worship."
The event had a massive guest list.
Roberts claimed 1,500 people showed up, but they didn't actually get anything professionally
catered.
Her mother ended up cooking "the entire meal" for the massive reception.
The Roberts' marriage yielded two children and, subsequently, six grandchildren.
A 'Founding Mother' of NPR
Cokie Roberts is often credited as being a "Founding Mother" of National Public Radio,
but according to NPR, she got her start hosting a public affairs show called Meeting of the
Minds on the local Washington Station WRC-TV.
After Meeting of the Minds, Roberts held a number of broadcast jobs, moved to Greece
with her husband for his job with the New York Times, and became a foreign correspondent
and freelancer for CBS.
She only began working with NPR in 1977, about eight years after it was founded, though it
was still virtually unknown.
Roberts became a pioneer for women in broadcast journalism through her work with NPR.
According to NPR, she was one of several women who held down a "visible role" there.
At the time, journalism was a massively male-dominated field, but women ended up gravitating towards
the station because it was a low-paying upstart.
According to NPR correspondent Mara Liaisson who spoke to Here & Now, NPR
"...paid so poorly back then, and a lot of times when male reporters got to a certain
age or got married, had kids, they would leave for a higher-paying job at a television network."
Roberts ended up serving as NPR's congressional correspondent for more than a decade, but
ultimately left for ABC where she became a political correspondent for World News Tonight
with Peter Jennings, appeared on Nightline as a fill-in anchor, and co-anchored This
Week.
Behind-the-scenes health struggles
According to The Washington Post, Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002,
which happened to coincide with her departure from This Week, the weekly Sunday show then
co-anchored by Sam Donaldson.
She had a successful lumpectomy and made a full recovery after chemo treatments.
In the thick of it, the journalist had a marked tenacity, telling WaPo that she didn't expect
her diagnosis to have "any major interference with [her] work," and that she still planned
to cover the midterm elections for ABC News.
Even cancer wasn't enough to make Roberts take a break.
In August 2019, the political commentator raised some concerns about her health following
an appearance on This Week, where she was notably thin.
Roberts was inundated with concerned messages before she finally opened up about her struggle
with unspecified "health issues" that caused her to lose weight.
She sought treatment and claimed she was "doing fine."
She told Axios in a statement,
"I very much appreciate the kind comments I have received and expect to be, as I have
been, working away in the days and months to come, covering what promises to be a fascinating
election.
I am grateful to everyone who has been in touch and sent their well wishes.
Thanks for caring."
Roberts ultimately passed away from breast cancer complications the following month.
Rocky relationship with Trump
According to CNN, former President Barack Obama called Roberts "a role model to young
women at a time when the profession was still dominated by men."
Former President George W. Bush described Roberts as a, quote, "talented, tough, and
fair reporter," and even called her "a friend."
President Trump seems to have held a different opinion.
Here's what he had to say to a group of journalists on Air Force One, according to CNN:
"I never met her.
She never treated me nicely.
But I would like to wish her family well.
She was a professional, and I respect professionals.
I respect you guys a lot, you people a lot...[Roberts] was a real professional.
Never treated me well, but I certainly respect her as a professional."
Trump's comments come nearly a year after Cokie penned an essay with her husband for
The Meridian Star that stated the president was, quote, "bent on destroying the credibility
of a free and independent press," and cited a Washington Post report that claimed he had
made "5,000 'false and misleading claims'" since taking office.
Trump and Roberts also had a heated phone interview exchange during his 2016 campaign.
"There have been incidents of children, of white children, pointing to their darker-skinned
classmates and saying, 'You'll be deported when Donald Trump is president.'"
Trump made it clear he didn't like Roberts' line of questioning:
"Is that something you've done in American political and social discourse that you're
proud of?"
"Well, I think your question's a very nasty question."
Champion of women's history
Cokie Roberts wasn't just a trailblazer for women in journalism.
The writer and commentator sought to tell the unsung stories of the women who shaped
history behind the scenes just like her mom had done by supporting her father's political
career and later becoming a Congresswoman to fill his empty seat.
Roberts authored six books that "examined the role of powerful women in the Civil War
era," many of which became best sellers.
The most recent prior to her death was Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington,
1848-1868.
She also authored a children's book called Founding Mothers: Remembering The Ladies in
2004.
Roberts' motivation was the fact that these women, who were essential to the foundation
of the United States, often disappeared into the background or were completely omitted
from history books.
She told NPR:
"There are these fabulous murals up on the walls above the Constitution, the Declaration
and the Bill of Rights, and they're all white men in white wigs with tights, [and] I don't
think they're recognizable to a lot of Americans.
But they weren't the only people who did it.
They were incredibly important I'm not taking anything away from our Founding Fathers but
they didn't do it alone."
Cancer never changed her perspective
Cancer didn't change Roberts' perspective on life.
The journalist always lived for her family first and her career second even if she told
the New York Times that she was "frantic" and "stressed" raising a family while working
two jobs.
In a 2002 interview with The Washington Post, Roberts admitted she, quote, "had a healthy
perspective on life" prior to her cancer diagnosis and "always cared more about family than [her]
career."
Discussing the deaths of her father and sister, who also died young at the age of 51, she
said she didn't need any further perspective on life.
In a Facebook Q&A as reported by Good Morning America, Roberts cited that her family was
one of the most rewarding aspects of her entire life not her Emmys nor the fact that the Library
of Congress named her a "Living Legend."
"I've been blessed in my life with...a long and happy marriage that produced two wonderful
children who have in turn each produced three spectacular grandchildren and that is by far
the best part."