Barbara Walters is known for her interviews with popular entertainers like Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, and Sir Laurence Olivier, and her 1999 interview with Monica Lewinsky drew 74 million viewers, making it the second most-watched interview of all time. She is also known for interviewing Donald and Melania Trump, Mary Kay Letourneau, and for hosting "American Scandals" on Investigation Discovery (2015).
Barbara Walters was an American broadcast journalist and television personality. She is the recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, 3 Daytime Emmy Awards (as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000), 7 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, and a GLAAD Media Award. Barbara was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1989 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.
Barbara Walters began her Journalism career in 1951. In 1961, Walters joined NBC's "The Today Show," starting out as a writer and researcher, then covering lighter-fare stories and the weather as the show's "Today Girl." She soon became a reporter-at-large and got to develop, write, and edit her interviews and reports. From 1971 to 1976, she also hosted "Not for Women Only," which aired after "The Today Show" on a local NBC affiliate. In 1979, Barbara joined ABC's "20/20," reuniting with Hugh Downs, who she had worked with on "The Today Show." She became Downs' co-anchor in 1984 and remained on the show until her retirement in 2004.
Walters also created the daytime talk show "The View," which won the Daytime Emmy for Best Talk Show in 2003. Barbara retired from the show on May 15, 2014, but occasionally returned as a guest host through 2015. Walters has interviewed many world leaders during her career, including Anwar Al Sadat, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, and several U.S. presidents.
Barbara Walters was born on 25th September 1929 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. Her birthname is Barbara Jill Walters. She holds an American nationality and belongs to the white ethnicity. Her star sign is Libra. She is a follower of Christianity. Walters was born into a middle-class family.
Her father, Lou Walters, was a booking agent, theatrical producer, and the founder of the famed Latin Quarter nightclub in New York while her mother, Dena, was a housewife. Her brother, Burton, died of pneumonia in 1944. Her older sister, Jacqueline, was born with mental disabilities and died of ovarian cancer in 1985.
As for education, Walters attended the Lawrence School in Brookline, Massachusetts, the US followed by a public school in Miami Beach. She completed her high school education at Birch Wathen School in 1947. In 1951, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.
Barbara Walters was married four times to three different men. Her first husband was Robert Henry Katz, a business executive, and former Navy lieutenant. They married on June 20, 1955, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. The marriage was reportedly annulled after eleven months, in 1957. Her second husband was Lee Guber, a theatrical producer and theater owner.
They married on December 8, 1963, and divorced in 1976. After Walters had three miscarriages, the couple adopted a baby girl named Jacqueline Dena Guber. Walters' third husband was Merv Adelson who at the time was the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married in 1981 and divorced in 1984. They remarried in 1986 and divorced for the second time in 1992.
At the time of her death on 30th December 2022, her net worth of Barbara Walters was estimated to be massive US $170 million. She had managed to earn such a huge fortune through her fifty decades and more journalism career. In 1976, she broke glass ceilings in a big way by making a $1 million salary for co-anchoring the ABC Evening News. In 2000, Walters raked in $12 million per year for ABC News and 20/20, before stepping down from the latter in 2004. At the time, it was the biggest news broadcaster payday in history.
Barbara Walters died at her home in Manhattan, New York City on December 30, 2022, at the age of 93. A cause of death was not immediately provided. Walters passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones at her New York home, according to Bob Iger, current CEO of The Walt Disney Company. Iger shared a post on Twitter Friday, calling Walters a 'true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself'.