Going There by Katie Couric
For Ellie and Carrie
Prologue
May 1985
MY PETER PAN collars and sensible pumps didn’t exactly scream Miami. It was a whole new world: causeways stretching across sparkling bays, cigarette boats, Cuban coffee, women roller-blading in bikinis. The pulsating city was about as far as you could get from my wholesome hometown of Arlington, Virginia.
It was also one of the hottest news markets in the country. I was a general-assignment reporter at WTVJ, where a normal week might mean covering a pit-bull attack, a tropical storm, a drug deal gone bad, and the Calle Ocho festival in Little Havana. For a young journalist looking to make her mark, Miami had everything.
My learning curve was steep. The run-and-gun of covering spot news was all new to me, while the terror of reporting live practically turned me to stone. But in Miami, you couldn’t dwell on your mistakes. The stories came fast, which meant lots of airtime and plenty of practice.
One day after work I was buying a birthday card at Burdines department store downtown when the woman at the register started examining my face. “You look just like that girl on TV!” she said.
Cue the choir of angels. My first time being recognized.
“Actually, I am that girl on TV,” I said with a smile.
The woman smiled back. “You know, dear, your skin looks so much better in person.”
BEING ON TELEVISION brings instant familiarity: People feel like they know you. They assess you, analyze you, project on you; they develop strong feelings about who they think you are. If you become a fixture in their home, like another member of the family, they even start to care about you. And you start to care about them too. Loyalty is pledged, bonds are built. I am still so moved by the power of television to make connections between people who’ve never met. Perhaps like you and me.
Over the years, whenever I ran into TODAY show viewers, they’d tell me they felt like they knew me. And in so many ways, they did. Because the parts of me they saw were real—the joy and frustration, the bloopers and belly laughs, the genuine affection I felt for my colleagues. They saw me become a mom to two daughters and grieve the loss of my husband and sister; they even got a good look at my colon. But it was two hours a day in a manufactured setting. There’s so much the audience didn’t see.
I’ve been a public figure for 30 years, a journalist for 40. The journey has exceeded every ambition I ever had. It’s allowed me to witness seismic events and huge societal changes up close, and help people—on a grand scale—understand them. It has been the privilege of my life.
But the journey has also been deeply personal: Summoning the grit to make my way in the male-run media business. Adjusting to the thrilling, chilling world of sudden fame. Learning on the job, and occasionally stumbling—with millions watching. Experiencing institutional sexism at the highest levels; hanging in long enough to see things start to change. Telling other people’s stories while complete strangers tried to tell mine. Doubting myself, forgiving myself, being proud of myself. As I say, it’s been a journey.
I’VE LOVED EVERY second of being on TV. And yet, it has a way of squeezing you down to a shape and size designed to fit comfortably in the nation’s living rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens. In other words, the box can put you in a box; the flat-screen can flatten. On TV, you are larger than life but somehow smaller, too, a neatly cropped version of who you are. Real life—the complications and contradictions, the messy parts—remains outside the frame.
It’s magical, television; I know it made my dreams come true. But it is not the whole story, and it is not the whole me. This book is.
Part I
1
Moxie
THE SUMMER AFTER I graduated from college, my skin turned orange. I was on the Scarsdale Diet, a high-protein fat-melter that let you eat as many carrots as you wanted. The idea was to look as good as possible for my wet hot American summer, a sticky, sandy final fling before finding a job—maybe even a career—in TV news.
My plan was to wait tables in a picture-postcard beach town where the smell of fried fish mingled with the salt air; where my friends and I would spend the day slathering ourselves with Johnson’s baby oil and lying out on beach towels, listening to the Bee Gees on our transistor radios. Then I’d shower, throw on a uniform, and hustle for tips at a restaurant on a shimmering inlet with skiffs scooting by.
That was the plan. Instead, I found a job at H. A. Winston’s, located on a scrubby stretch of Route 1 in Delaware. The chain specialized in burgers with ambitious toppings （the Society Hill had blue cheese and chives; the Russian was dressed with sour cream and caviar）。 I loved the controlled chaos of the kitchen, shouting to the cooks over the pop and sizzle of the fryers, navigating the dining room while balancing dinner plates up and down my arm.