I’ve never been particularly motivated by money, but I saw her point and directed Alan to go back to Les. Alan laughed and said he would communicate Elinor Couric’s terms. Les bumped up the offer to $15 million.
On April 5th, 2006, we made it official. A gushing press release went out: “With this move,” Les said, “our News Division takes yet another giant leap forward.”
Not everyone was excited. As I walked by the Brooks Brothers in Rockefeller Center one afternoon, a sweet, elderly security guard did a double take, then asked me plaintively, “Katie, why’d you have to quit us?”
57
Goodbye from Kansas!
WITH NEARLY TWO months left before officially joining CBS, I found myself in a weird bi-network limbo. I wanted to end my run at NBC with all the class the network had shown me. They had always been so generous—for instance, ordering town cars for Jay’s funeral and hosting a reception at the Metropolitan Club afterward. But I had accepted a new job and I needed to support my future employer.
Lesley Stahl hosted a “ladies’ lunch” in the back room of Michael’s, the media hive, attended by the women who’d made it at CBS News—producers, reporters, and a few second-tier executives. In the pioneering class led by Barbara Walters, Lesley had been a TV-news fixture for as far back as I could remember, posing tough questions on Face the Nation in her sporty shirtdresses. We knew each other only casually, and I thought it was gracious of her to do this. Everyone seemed genuinely excited to have me on board, although I got a little nervous when Lesley pulled out a note Andy Rooney had asked her to read.
I’d always loved Andy Rooney’s wry commentary at the end of 60 Minutes. But he was as old and temperamental as his Smith Corona and didn’t exactly greet the news of my arrival like the Wells Fargo wagon. In fact, a few weeks before the lunch, Andy was on Don Imus’s radio show when Imus asked how he felt about the changes at CBS. Andy said he was “not enthusiastic”： “I think everybody likes Katie Couric; I mean, how can you not like Katie Couric? But I don’t know anybody at CBS News who is pleased that she’s coming here.”
Oh, boy.
Looking back, perhaps I should have heard the air-raid sirens going off and maybe even run for cover. At the Michael’s lunch, though, Andy tried to make amends in the form of a note he’d pounded out on the aforementioned Smith Corona. It read in part:
In spite of reports to the contrary, I look forward to your coming to CBS. I did think Bob Schieffer went a little overboard when he said you were the best thing that ever happened to CBS News. Has he forgotten the day they cancelled the Dan Rather/Connie Chung co-anchor experiment?
Then, in a kicker that would have gotten him in a heap of trouble today:
I kiss Lesley when I meet her in the hall now and I hope I get to know you well enough to kiss. I know we have a ways to go.
These guys.
THE UPFRONTS—THE annual dog-and-pony show where networks parade their upcoming programs and talent for an audience of advertisers—was scheduled for May 15th, two weeks before my last hurrah at TODAY. CBS wanted me to be one of their headliners. Jeff Zucker seriously did not, since I was still collecting a paycheck from NBC. But Alan told him it was nonnegotiable. CBS was intent on showing off its new acquisition, making me feel like a car in a Christmas commercial. （At an affiliates’ meeting, Les would smugly disclose how he finally got me to say yes: “We drank many bottles of expensive wine on the sofa in my apartment…Don’t worry, my wife was in the next room.” Hardee-har, Les.）
They asked me to say a few words about how excited I was to start this historic new venture. I wore a black pin-striped Ralph Lauren suit with a bit of a ruffle and just a dash of Don’t fuck with me, fellas. I felt like I had officially gone to the other side.
Our apartment looked like my neighborhood florist, arrangements of hydrangeas and roses and ranunculus and towering white orchids crowding every surface. Cards and letters were pouring in. Well-wishers ranged from Bono to Claudette Howard from Schenectady. Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan editor and patron saint of sexy single gals everywhere, found a classically Helen Gurley Brown way to celebrate this triumph for women: “You have been such a classy little girl during all the hullabaloo （and there sure has been a lot）。” Wrote Nancy Reagan, “God—just think—a whole new world! You get to sleep in—heaven!” Mike Wallace simply asked, “So when do the games begin?”
MAY 31ST, 2006. My last day on the TODAY show would be an unabashed victory lap. There were Olympics-scale banners on the plaza emblazoned with my picture, and people holding signs hand-lettered with messages like WE’LL MISS YOU! and GOODBYE FROM KANSAS, KATIE! There were endless clips of news-making interviews, of exotic locales, of my on-air escapades—serving a volleyball, snowboarding, balance-beaming, smoking a stogie with George Burns, shooting pool with Paul Newman, ice-skating with Michelle Kwan, dirty-dancing with Patrick Swayze. Hugh Jackman taught me how to swing a golf club; Liz Taylor showed me how to keep lipstick from getting on my teeth. Then there was Harrison Ford. After our interview, I whispered to his publicist, “Gee, that was like pulling teeth.” That afternoon, I got a call from Ford. “I heard you thought I was a bad interview and I just wanted to apologize.” I blubbered something about still waters running deep and got off the phone ASAP.