Barbara Jill Walters was born on September 25, 1929, in Massachusetts. Her parents, Lou Walters and Dena Seletsky, were Jewish. In 1900 her parents came to America as refugees from part of the former Russian Empire which today is known as Eastern Europe.
In 1961 she began working for NBC’s The Today Show merely as a writer and researcher and worked her way up to being the show’s “Today Girl” which was a role that handled second page type assignments. After about a year she became a top report where she was able to write and edit her own reports and interviews.
Walters continued with NBC, working her way up to eventually co-host NBC’s Today Show, however when Frank McGee was named host of the show, he refused to do joint interviews with her unless he was given the first question. It wasn’t until after McGee died that NBC officially acknowledged Walters as the first female co-host in the show’s history in 1974.
Barbara Walters has appeared as a special news commentator for ABC for many years. She has covered presidential inaugurations as well as the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center on 9/11. For the 1976 presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, it was Walters who was chosen to moderate the event that took place at the Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Perhaps the show that garnered Walters the most notoriety is the ABC News Magazine 20/20 where she worked for many years joining the host Hugh Downs in 1979. Walters has been apart of some of the most important interviews throughout the later part of the twentieth century. With her personable style of journalism she is known to be one of the most beloved and respected journalist of her time.
Currently Barbara Walters is one of the hosts the daytime talk show known as The View. She has described her latest project as a forum for women of different generations, backgrounds and views. What The View provides is a perspective that nearly any woman from any walk in life can relate to.
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