Cokie Roberts

She served on the boards of several non-profit organizations such as the Kaiser Family Foundation and was appointed by President George W. Bush to his Council on Service and Civic Participation.

Cokie Roberts studied at Wellesley College and Schools of the Sacred Heart. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is journalism. Residence is recorded at Bethesda. Employment is recorded with NPR, ABC Signature and PBS. Distinctions recorded are Library of Congress Living Legend, Edward R. Murrow Award, Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting and Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.

• Birth Name — Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs • Born — 27 December 1943 • Died — 17 September 2019 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. • Place of death — Washington, D.C., U.S. • Resting Place — Congressional Cemetery • Known for — Journalist, author, pundit, television • Education — Wellesley College (BA) • Employer — NPR, ABC, PBS • Political Party — Democratic • Occupation — Journalist, author • Title — Contributing Senior News Analyst • Children — * Lee • Rebecca • Parents — Hale Boggs Lindy Boggs • Relatives — Barbara Boggs Sigmund (sister) Tommy Boggs (brother)

Roberts was born in New Orleans. She received the nickname Cokie from her brother, Tommy, who as a child could not pronounce her given name, Corinne. Her parents were Lindy Boggs and Hale Boggs, each of whom served for decades as Democratic members of the House of Representatives from Louisiana; Lindy succeeded Hale after his plane disappeared over Alaska in 1972. Cokie was their third child. Her sister Barbara became mayor of Princeton, New Jersey, and a candidate for the United States Senate. Her brother Tommy became a prominent attorney and lobbyist in Washington, D.C. She attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls Roman Catholic high school in New Orleans, and graduated from the Stone Ridge School, an all-girls school outside Washington, D.C., in 1960. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1964, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in political science.

Roberts's first job in journalism was at WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., where she was host of its weekly public affairs program Meeting of the Minds. After moving with her husband Steve, also a journalist, to New York City, she found work in 1967 as a reporter for Cowles Communications. She worked briefly as a producer for WNEW-TV before Steve's career had them relocating to Los Angeles. She worked for Altman Productions and then for KNBC-TV as producer of the children's program Serendipity, which won a 1971 Los Angeles Area Emmy Award. She also moved with her husband to Greece, where she was a stringer for CBS News in Athens. Roberts began working for National Public Radio (NPR) in 1978, working as the congressional correspondent for more than 10 years. Because of her early involvement as a female journalist in the network at a time when women were not often involved in journalism at the highest levels, she has been called one of the "founding mothers of NPR." Roberts was a contributor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on the evening television news program The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Her coverage of the Iran–Contra Affair for that program won her the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting in 1988. From 1981 to 1984, in addition to her work at NPR, she also cohosted The Lawmakers, a weekly public television program on Congress. Starting in 1992, Roberts served as a senior news analyst and commentator for NPR, primarily on the daily news program Morning Edition. In 1994, The New York Times credited her, along with NPR's Linda Wertheimer and Nina Totenberg, with transforming male-dominated Washington, D.C., political journalism. Roberts went to work for ABC News in 1988 as a political correspondent for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, continuing to serve part-time as a political commentator at NPR. She appeared as a panelist for many years on ABC News' Sunday morning broadcast This Week with David Brinkley. After Brinkley's retirement, she co-anchored the program with Sam Donaldson (renamed This Week with Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts) from 1996 to 2002, while serving as the chief congressional analyst for ABC News. The two were replaced as anchors in September 2002 by George Stephanopoulos. She also covered politics, Congress, and public policy while reporting for World News Tonight and other ABC News broadcasts. Roberts continued to serve occasionally as a panelist on This Week and work on NPR. Her final assignment with NPR was a series of segments on Morning Edition titled "Ask Cokie," in which she answered questions submitted by listeners about subjects usually related to U.S. politics.

In 1989, Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from New Mexico, was abducted, raped, and tortured while working in Guatemala by members of a Guatemalan government-backed death squad. Her abductors believed Ortiz was a subversive. During a subsequent interview, Roberts contested Ortiz's claim that an American was among her captors. (The United States provided significant military aid to Guatemala at the time.) Roberts implied that Ortiz was lying about the entire episode, although Ortiz later won a lawsuit against a Guatemalan general she accused in the case. It was later revealed that Patton Boggs, the law firm of Roberts's brother Tommy, was paid by the Guatemalan government to promote a more positive image of the regime, which was widely criticized internationally for human rights abuses.

From 1966 until her death, Roberts was married to Steven V. Roberts, a professor and fellow journalist. They met in summer 1962, when she was 18 and he was 19. They resided in Bethesda, Maryland. They had two children: a son, Lee, and a daughter, Rebecca. Roberts was a Roman Catholic. In 2002, Roberts was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She was successfully treated at the time but died from complications of the disease in Washington, D.C., on September 17, 2019.

• Essays * • The book explores the lives of the women behind the men who wrote the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence. • Continues the story of early America's influential women who shaped the U.S. during its early stages, chronicling their public roles and private responsibilities. * • Stories about the formidable women of Washington, D.C. during the Civil War.

The following is established of the heading itself.

On origins, the institutional record states the following. Roberts died in 2019 at Washington, D.C. It is also recorded that cokie Roberts was born in 1943 at New Orleans. It is also recorded that cokie Roberts is recorded at birth as Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs.

* • Official biography—NPR • Recent NPR stories by Cokie Roberts (2009)—NPR • —Charlie Rose • Women of Influence—National Endowment for the Humanities • 1994 commencement speech; —Wellesley College • Oral History of the U.S. House of Representatives; —Cokie Roberts gives a first-hand account of growing up in the capital • cokie-roberts • Remembering Cokie Roberts, 1943–2019—NPR memorial page, including the NPR special *