My big break came in the fall of 1981 when Washington Bureau Chief Stuart Loory, who looked a little like Groucho Marx, said, “I know you’re interested in becoming a reporter. So here’s your chance: Tomorrow morning I want you to go live from the White House and report on the president’s schedule for the day.”
I panicked. Live? As in live from the White House? I’d never gone live before. Live TV is working without a net—no do-overs.
“Really?” I said incredulously. “Okay, great.” While inside I was thinking, Oh. My. God.
That night I laid out my light blue pin-striped pantsuit. Then I grabbed my hairbrush Marcia Brady–style, stared into the mirror, and said in earnest, measured tones over and over, “Katherine Couric, CNN, at the White House…Katherine Couric, CNN, at the White House,” hoping my given name would lend an air of authority my face and voice lacked. My stomach churned. I spent most of the night in the bathroom.
I woke up at 4:30 a.m., got dressed, and drove to the bureau to rip the AP daybook off the wire machine that detailed the president’s schedule. Unfortunately for me, President Reagan was meeting with former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski—a nightmare to pronounce.
At the White House, a crew member helped me insert my IFB, the earpiece that allows the control room to communicate with reporters in the field. With minutes to go before my “hit,” I stood there practicing under my breath, waiting for the anchors to throw to me. Through the earpiece I could hear them reading the headlines, then going to a commercial break. As I listened to a jingle about the joys of orange juice, I suddenly heard the anchors’ voices.
“Who is that girl?”
“She looks like she’s 12 years old.”
And suddenly I was on. One of them said, “Katherine Couric is standing by at the White House with more…”
I heard myself reciting the president’s schedule, my voice so high, it was as if I’d inhaled two balloons’ worth of helium.
Everything was off—my tone, my pacing, the way I looked down at my notes instead of at the camera （although I did pronounce Zbigniew Brzezinski correctly）。 After I threw back to the anchors, I looked at the crew for positive reinforcement. They didn’t say a word.
Back at the Washington bureau, I hoped someone, anyone, would tell me I had done a good job. I walked to the assignment desk, where Bill Hensel was sitting.
“Hi, Bill!” I said eagerly.
“Reese Schonfeld”—president of CNN—“just called. He never wants to see you on the air again.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“No. That’s it.” Bill looked at me sympathetically and shrugged. As I slunk away, some Sandra Boynton wisdom on a coffee mug caught my eye: DON’T LET THE TURKEYS GET YOU DOWN. Even though they had, and I was. I looked around at the other reporters and wondered, What do they have that I don’t? Then it hit me: experience.
I’d been at the DC bureau for a year and my reporting future wasn’t looking particularly rosy. By now, Don Farmer and Chris Curle were at CNN in Atlanta and looking for an associate producer for their noon-to-two broadcast Take Two. They asked me if I was interested.
Uh, yeah. Not only had I found my mentors, I’d found my next chapter.
7
The State of the Onion
I HEADED SOUTH ON I-95 in the white Toyota Corolla my parents had bought me—a gift for going to an affordable state school （my first year at UVA cost less than $2,000）。 But the car was bare-bones, with no AC, and by the time I passed the giant peach on the big blue sign welcoming me to Georgia, I had a serious case of swamp ass.
My father grew up 140 miles south of Atlanta, in Dublin, where he spent hot, lazy afternoons shooting squirrels with a 12-gauge shotgun and reading. He was bespectacled and studious; at Mercer University in Macon, he was editor in chief of the school newspaper, the Cluster.
His great-grandfather Charles Mathurin was an orphan, left on the doorstep of a hospital in Brittany, France. He was taken in and given the name Cour, which in Gaelic means “the smallest little person”; the ic was tacked on as an endearment. Et voilà—Couric.
In 1831, when he was just a teenager, Charles stowed away on a ship bound for America. Onboard, he met a woman named Henriette Fontaine, who was traveling with her husband and child. Before the ship docked in Pensacola, Charles jumped overboard to avoid getting caught. Soon, he and Henriette crossed paths again—her husband and child had both died not long after they’d arrived. Charles and the widow Fontaine （12 years his senior, an early cougar） fell in love, married, and took a wagon train to Eufaula, Alabama, near the Georgia border, where they settled and raised four children. One of them, Alfred Alexis, was my dad’s grandfather.