In the spring of 1982, thanks to a budding bro-ship between Ted Turner and Fidel Castro, we broadcast for a week from Havana—the first American network to do so since Castro took over. A crew that included Don, Chris, me, and Guy chartered a DC-3 to Cuba. I marveled at the pastel-hued buildings and vintage Chevys with their Batmobile fins in a land untouched by time since the ’62 embargo. The hotel buffet was laden with salads drowning in mayonnaise, and everyone drank Coca-Cola by the gallon.
The embargo had apparently extended to toilet seats. When we got to our hotel, we discovered that nobody had one. Except me. Everyone was so jealous. I’d never won anything, but I guess you could say I hit the jackpot.
And I got to do some stories, including one on Hemingway in Cuba and his love of the fishing village Cojímar, the setting for The Old Man and the Sea. When I watch that piece now, it sounds more like an eighth-grade book report than an artfully crafted feature, but I gave it my all, and it showed.
“Your piece was brilliant, Katie!” said Reese Schonfeld over the phone—the same guy who’d banned me from the airwaves a year before.
8
Breast Size
AT CNN WE worked hard and played hard. One of the anchors hosted an annual Halloween party with instructions to come as your “favorite” story of the year. My friend Bonnie came as Grace Kelly, who’d died in a car crash that September; Bonnie wore a ball gown she’d picked up at a thrift shop, a rhinestone tiara, and a steering wheel around her neck that she’d found at a junkyard. A producer came as Vic Morrow, the actor who’d been decapitated while filming the Twilight Zone movie; he wore fatigues and what looked like helicopter blades protruding from his neck. Someone else showed up as a tampered-with bottle of Tylenol.
I was a flight attendant in a blazer, khaki skirt, and shoulder bag. And ripped stockings and a single shoe. The previous January, Air Florida Flight 90 had crashed into the icy Potomac shortly after takeoff—78 people died, including heroic passengers who’d drowned while saving others.
I know what you’re thinking. But we were newspeople with a twisted sense of humor whose jobs sometimes required ironic distance. Still, what the hell was wrong with us?
Clearly, it was a less enlightened time. Especially when it came to women in the workplace. With a new generation looking to get a toehold in the industry, there were easily as many Mad Men–era leftovers who wanted to get the broads out of broadcasting.
One week, I filled in for a Take Two producer while she was on vacation, attending an editorial meeting in her place. I was running a few minutes late, per usual, so when I got to the conference room, the eight male executives and lone young woman （in charge of promos） were already seated. The number-two man at the network, Ed Turner （no relation to Ted）， was running the meeting. As I walked in, he picked up on my arrival and said to the room, “That’s not why Katie is successful. She’s successful because of her determination, hard work, intelligence, and”—here Turner paused—“breast size.”
I froze. The place went quiet. Some people laughed nervously. Others looked down uncomfortably. I took my seat.
I couldn’t focus. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with this kind of BS: There was the customer at Gifford’s ice cream parlor who, while I athletically scooped his mint chip, asked if my right breast was larger than my left; the teenage boy who walked by me at a crowded high school football game and casually but firmly cupped my crotch; the GM at a radio station I visited after interning there one summer who leered at my chest and asked, “Did you go on the pill? Your breasts are much bigger than they used to be.”
After the meeting, I walked into the office Don and Chris shared.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” I told them, and described what Ed had done. They looked incredulous, then disgusted.
I was still stewing about it the next day. Don fed a piece of paper into his IBM Selectric. Together we composed the following:
TO: Ed Turner
FROM: Katie Couric
DATE: December 14, 1983
SUBJECT: Tuesday’s Morning Meeting
I found your remark that I had succeeded because of my determination, hard work, intelligence and breast size insulting, demeaning, embarrassing, humiliating and totally uncalled for…If you were intending to be humorous, you failed…I request that you apologize to me and that you somehow indicate to the others who heard the remark that you have so apologized.
I hand-delivered the memo to Ed Turner’s office. Within a half hour, he was on the line.