Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. The pressure,
Speaker 1: the dread were constant. Sometimes when the Today Show was over,
Speaker 1: I'd collapse on the floor of the bathroom in my office,
Speaker 1: Bomas cigarette from my hairdresser and sob ridiculous. I know
Speaker 1: my husband has cancer and I'm smoking, but that's how
Speaker 1: completely undone I was. I keep it together for the show,
Speaker 1: the only two hours of my day when I wasn't
Speaker 1: obsessing over j spate, and then at nine oh two am,
Speaker 1: I'd fall apart. You're probably thinking that voice sounds familiar,
Speaker 1: because that's Katie Couric, journalist, news anchor and most recently,
Speaker 1: author of the number one New York Times bestselling memoir
Speaker 1: Going There. Sometimes when someone is very well known, we think, well,
Speaker 1: we think we know them. But if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that hosting this show has taught me, it's that we
Speaker 1: all have secret in our lives, every single one of us.
Speaker 1: Katie's is a story of grit, resilience, and grace, even
Speaker 1: while living under the microscope that is fame. I'm Danny Shapiro,
Speaker 1: and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the
Speaker 1: secrets we keep from ourselves. So described for me the
Speaker 1: landscape of your childhood, Well, it's a very beautiful landscape.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I feel guilty. As I've gotten older and
Speaker 1: met more people, Danny, I realized that so many of
Speaker 1: us don't have the kind of loving family I had.
Speaker 1: I had really pretty typical in middle class nuclear family
Speaker 1: raising kids in the fifties and sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 1: My parents. My mom was a stay at home mom,
Speaker 1: which I think resulted in some frustration for her. My
Speaker 1: dad was a newspaperman who then went into public relations
Speaker 1: because I think it was hard to support a family
Speaker 1: of four as a single breadwinner as a print reporter.
Speaker 1: And I'm the youngest of four, so that very much
Speaker 1: informed the person I became. I was sort of the entertainer,
Speaker 1: the cut up, you know, the one that would be
Speaker 1: performing for my sisters, gentlemen callers. I was the one
Speaker 1: cracking jokes at the dinner table. My mom would always
Speaker 1: laugh and my father would say eleanor don't encourage her.
Speaker 1: My parents were ambitious for us, but not helicopter parents.
Speaker 1: They wanted us to do well. Education was really emphasized
Speaker 1: in my family. It was very important for us to
Speaker 1: go to a good college and do well academically. I
Speaker 1: did less well than my siblings because I think as
Speaker 1: the last kid, I sort of had more finely tuned
Speaker 1: emotional intelligence and kind of could get away with being
Speaker 1: charming and funny and sweet talking my teachers. It was
Speaker 1: a really happy childhood. No big traumas grandparents died as
Speaker 1: grandparents do. Um, some sickness and my parents, but much
Speaker 1: later in life I would say, from the age of
Speaker 1: zero to forty, I was very blessed. My husband Jay,
Speaker 1: my late husband, used to say, I was born on
Speaker 1: a sunny day and a lot of things really went
Speaker 1: my way for the most part. I grew up in Arlington, Virginia,
Speaker 1: in a suburb just outside Washington, d C. It was
Speaker 1: teaming with kids riding their bikes, playing street baseball, Capture
Speaker 1: the flag, crab apple fights. Um, you know, just very idyllic,
Speaker 1: you know, playing red rover, red rover and red light
Speaker 1: green light, catching lightning bugs at night. It almost sounds
Speaker 1: like a Norman Rockwell painting as I talk of it now,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of crab apple fights. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we had them little We just throw them at our neighbors,
Speaker 1: and especially at the boys. As Katie grows up in
Speaker 1: this idyllic atmosphere, she learns that sweet talking her teachers
Speaker 1: will only get her so far academically. When she's a
Speaker 1: junior in high school, she buckles down, commits to her
Speaker 1: school work, and gets straight a's. It's an important year
Speaker 1: for colleges, and she has her heart set on attending
Speaker 1: Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I got rejected, not even
Speaker 1: weight listed, for crying out loud, and was particularly painful
Speaker 1: because my sisters had both gone there. My sister Emily
Speaker 1: was five Beta Kappa and Sigma Si, which was a
Speaker 1: science honorary society that I had never heard of. My
Speaker 1: sister Kiki also did really well there, went on to
Speaker 1: Harvard Graduate School. She got her master's and landscape architect
Speaker 1: at the Harvard School of Design. And um, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was really embarrassing and mortifying that I just got rejected,
Speaker 1: full stop. When I looked back on it, Danny, there
Speaker 1: were other moments when I was disappointed, but they sound
Speaker 1: so silly in hindsight, you know. I remember, I think
Speaker 1: it was in junior high and the cheerleading team. I
Speaker 1: remember this so vividly, was time for the cheerly need
Speaker 1: squad to pick the captain and co captain. And I
Speaker 1: was one of the one of two girls who had
Speaker 1: been accepted to be a cheerleader in eighth grade. Most
Speaker 1: to them were ninth grade. I walked in and I heard,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a lot of whispering, and of
Speaker 1: course I wanted to be captain. Hello, And the gym teacher,
Speaker 1: Mrs Beats, who was in charge of the cheerleader said
Speaker 1: that she was going to pick the captain and co captain,
Speaker 1: which really just was an affront to my democratic principles.
Speaker 1: You know that the gym teacher is not supposed to
Speaker 1: pick the captain and co captain. I was beside myself.
Speaker 1: I was so upset. I came home. I was both
Speaker 1: furious and just terribly upset, and I remember thinking, that
Speaker 1: is so unfair, Like the teacher isn't allowed to do this.
Speaker 1: This is a democratic process. The cheerleaders are supposed to
Speaker 1: pick the captain and co captain. Isn't that funny? And
Speaker 1: that was a big upsetting event in my life, but
Speaker 1: in retrospect probably really important because you know what they
Speaker 1: say about you have to learn how to deal with disappointment.
Speaker 1: You have to learn that life is not fair. You
Speaker 1: have to learn to say, Okay, well that happened. I've
Speaker 1: got to move on, and I did, despite its sting.
Speaker 1: Katie bounces back from the cheerleading incident and continues to
Speaker 1: be involved at school in extracurriculars and keeping her head up.
Speaker 1: She's popular and well liked, but when she receives that
Speaker 1: thin envelope from Smith rejecting her, the news is catastrophic
Speaker 1: for her and opens a fault line that she hadn't
Speaker 1: known was there. She becomes bulimic. I was bulimick for
Speaker 1: probably a total of on and off for maybe six
Speaker 1: or seven years in my sort of late teens to
Speaker 1: my mid to late twenties. But it was very sporadic.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I would do it, you know, several times a week,
Speaker 1: even a few times a day. Sometime I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: it at all. So it was very off and on,
Speaker 1: and I think, gosh, what was that about. I think
Speaker 1: it was about not measuring up, about not meeting expectations,
Speaker 1: about being less than not being perfect, um probably feeling
Speaker 1: guilty that I hadn't applied myself more not following in
Speaker 1: my sister's footsteps. I think that's what it was about,
Speaker 1: and then punishing myself and being angry at myself for
Speaker 1: all the things that I didn't do versus being happy
Speaker 1: about everything I did to right now, that makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, and you know so much about attempting
Speaker 1: to control the universe and oneself. I think I also had,
Speaker 1: you know, really bad body image. You know, I was
Speaker 1: a very scrawny, skinny kid. I remember like I weighed
Speaker 1: forty five pounds when I was in fourth grade. You know,
Speaker 1: It's little and wiry, very athletic. And then I really
Speaker 1: hated going through puberty. You know, I've been a really
Speaker 1: fast runner in elementary school. They used to pull me
Speaker 1: out of fourth grade to run against the sixth grade boys,
Speaker 1: and I was so proud of that. When I reached puberty,
Speaker 1: I felt like my body was betrayed me in a way.
Speaker 1: I wasn't as fast. I was more curvy, which I
Speaker 1: didn't like. I didn't really love, you know, having breasts.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in a family where diet culture
Speaker 1: was really strong, where my sisters were always on a
Speaker 1: diet and my mom was always on a diet, and
Speaker 1: there was always tab and fresca and cottage cheese around
Speaker 1: was really during that era, And so I think that
Speaker 1: because I wasn't super thin or tall and willowy, I
Speaker 1: also felt very bad about myself and my appearance. You know,
Speaker 1: I was a little more true. I was kind of
Speaker 1: your classic mes amorph no muscular, but not super thin
Speaker 1: and not tall. I was probably five two or three.
Speaker 1: I'm now barely five four. So I think I was
Speaker 1: also responding to this cultural pressure and societal pressure to
Speaker 1: look a certain way, you know, to look like Twiggy
Speaker 1: or look like the models in seventeen magazine, which I
Speaker 1: did not. Did anybody know that you were going through
Speaker 1: this during those years? Not really. My mom certainly didn't.
Speaker 1: She would have been just so upset, you know, because
Speaker 1: it's so phys physically damaging. I remember mentioning it to
Speaker 1: my sister, my oldest sister, at one point, and her
Speaker 1: confiding to me that she had at times been blimic,
Speaker 1: which I thought was super interesting that, you know, there
Speaker 1: they think there might be some genetic predisposition to eating
Speaker 1: disorders that are then exacerbated by iron Man. But no,
Speaker 1: it was pretty secretive a very small group of people.
Speaker 1: If anyone knew about it, it was shrouded in shame
Speaker 1: and secrecy and self loathing. Where their secrecy their shame,
Speaker 1: Where their secrecy, there's silence. This toxic trio. Secrecy, shame,
Speaker 1: silence form a vicious cycle, one that is very hard
Speaker 1: to break. Of course, Katie doesn't want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and when one roommate confronts her about her bolimia, she
Speaker 1: quickly moves out. But then she is shaken to the
Speaker 1: core by the tragic death of Karen Carpenter, a singer
Speaker 1: songwriter beloved by a whole generation who died as a
Speaker 1: result of her anorexia at the age of thirty two.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it was a whole confluence of things.
Speaker 1: I think that that was very shocking when Karen Carpenter died.
Speaker 1: You know, that was sort of the music my middle
Speaker 1: school years. And I think the fact that this could
Speaker 1: actually kill you, I mean, she was antarextic versus bliemic um,
Speaker 1: and maybe she was both. I was just believe it.
Speaker 1: But it really was crushing when Karen Carpenter died, and
Speaker 1: I thought, holy smokes, you can actually die from doing this.
Speaker 1: And I think it just kind of shook me to
Speaker 1: my core. And I thought I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Speaker 1: I never wanted to do it. Like you, It's almost
Speaker 1: like you're so restricted in your diet then you do
Speaker 1: something that's quote unquote bad. You know, it's really weird
Speaker 1: how we ascribe moral judgments to food. You know, I
Speaker 1: was really bad today. I was really good today. And
Speaker 1: I think once I would set up these impossible you know,
Speaker 1: I'm only going to eat an apple and a coffee
Speaker 1: yogurt today, you know, and I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: jump hope and one of those suits that makes you sweat.
Speaker 1: Then if I ate almost I got to the point
Speaker 1: where I had a piece of gum that wasn't sugarless.
Speaker 1: I'd say, I blew it. I blew it. I'm a
Speaker 1: terrible person. Well, I'm gonna have to start tomorrow. I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat everything I can, and then I'd feel
Speaker 1: guilty and then I throw it up. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was just that kind of cycle. And that cycle is
Speaker 1: happening during a period of time where you go to
Speaker 1: college and you start your career. It's like it's during
Speaker 1: a period of time where in the outside world you're
Speaker 1: beginning to you know, find your footing and succeed and
Speaker 1: I think it's true of so many people, I mean
Speaker 1: maybe all people in some way, that there's this kind
Speaker 1: of at times in our lives, this kind of shadow
Speaker 1: life that's going on, that is the other side of
Speaker 1: what people see. Appearances can be deceiving. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was an exciting time for me, but I was
Speaker 1: it was always this kind of little thing on my shoulder.
Speaker 1: Oh what are you going to eat today? Oh, you
Speaker 1: had two cups of instant hot chocolate when you were
Speaker 1: at ABC News, when you were working the overnights. You're
Speaker 1: terrible person. But it's terrible, Like why why do we
Speaker 1: do this to ourselves? I just don't know. How can
Speaker 1: we have a healthier relationship with food? Because I enjoy food,
Speaker 1: you know, I enjoy eating. I love trying new restaurants,
Speaker 1: and I like the social aspect of eating. But it's
Speaker 1: never it's always accompanied by guilt or shame or the
Speaker 1: judgment that I have no discipline or I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: eaten that. Throughout this period of time, Katie's dating. She's
Speaker 1: a young journalist on the rise, and though her career
Speaker 1: has come first, she reaches a point at which she
Speaker 1: wants to find a partner a real partner. I had
Speaker 1: dated a out in my twenties, all sorts of different people,
Speaker 1: but I had never gotten serious because I knew that
Speaker 1: my job required me to move to different markets, and
Speaker 1: I never wanted to put down roots, say in Miami,
Speaker 1: where I dated a policeman, which was kind of a
Speaker 1: fun different experience for me, one that my mom did
Speaker 1: not approve of at all, to you know, going out
Speaker 1: in Atlanta with the TV director and then an artist
Speaker 1: who lived in the apartment below me. But I felt
Speaker 1: like I wanted to find a partner, and so I'm
Speaker 1: very intentional about most things in my life. When I
Speaker 1: want something, I figure out how I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1: And I was invited to a party and it was
Speaker 1: full of like young twenty very young girls in their
Speaker 1: early twenties, some even college dudents. Because I figured I
Speaker 1: was going to meet some interesting people, especially some young professionals,
Speaker 1: and I remember meeting Jay. We started talking and I
Speaker 1: was immediately attracted to him. We just sort of started
Speaker 1: this kind of fun conversation. I said I was the
Speaker 1: oldest person at the party. He said, I doubt it.
Speaker 1: And we showed each other our driver's license, and indeed
Speaker 1: He was a year older than I, but we were
Speaker 1: born two days apart. I was January seven, he was
Speaker 1: January nine. Anyway, I just found him fun and funny
Speaker 1: and intriguing and nice, and um, I asked him out
Speaker 1: on our first date. I had his business card. I
Speaker 1: called him. He hadn't called me for a few days,
Speaker 1: and I said, I thought you were going to call me,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, apparently I didn't have to. And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, what a cocky son of a bitch. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we ended up having dinner at a Thai restaurant,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was sort of I told him
Speaker 1: pretty early on in our relationship he was everything I
Speaker 1: was looking for in a partner. He was very smart,
Speaker 1: He was dedicated and devoted to his family. He was
Speaker 1: one of seven kids. He was kind of the go
Speaker 1: to and his family. He was, you know, problem solver.
Speaker 1: He was funny, he was charming. He had this kind
Speaker 1: of old world elegance about him. He lived in a
Speaker 1: basement apartment in Georgetown, but somehow it was just beautifully decorated.
Speaker 1: You know, he had nice antiques and he just had
Speaker 1: a real sense of style and very good taste, and
Speaker 1: that appealed to me a lot. But of course the
Speaker 1: most appealing thing was he was just really a kind person,
Speaker 1: fun to be around, intellectually stimulating. We talked about leon
Speaker 1: Uris's Trinity and he gave me sort of the history
Speaker 1: of Northern Ireland over lunch, and I was thinking, oh wow,
Speaker 1: this is this guy is intense and serious. I really
Speaker 1: fell head over heels for him, and you know, he
Speaker 1: was on the partner track at his law firm. Not
Speaker 1: long after that seminal time meal, Katie and Jay get
Speaker 1: together and get married. As Jay is advancing in his
Speaker 1: law career, Katie is doing the same in her career
Speaker 1: as a television journalist. She's dedicated to her work, she's
Speaker 1: good at it, and she's solidifying her goals for the future.
Speaker 1: I definitely saw myself as sort of the quintessential a
Speaker 1: woman who wanted to quote unquote have it all, but
Speaker 1: who wanted to, you know, have a fulfilling career. I
Speaker 1: think because my mom didn't, and I think my goal
Speaker 1: when I was a local news reporter in Miami, I
Speaker 1: used to say, I want to be a network correspondent
Speaker 1: by the time I'm thirty, and so I had a
Speaker 1: very concrete goal that was my aspiration. So I saw
Speaker 1: us as a two career couple. Maybe I'd be a
Speaker 1: national correspondent working at NBC in Washington or one of
Speaker 1: the networks, or covering Capitol Hill or the White House.
Speaker 1: I just thought that I would be doing something that
Speaker 1: was exciting and interesting and lucrative professionally. You know, my dad.
Speaker 1: I remember I could have gone into radio, and I
Speaker 1: actually tried to get a job at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: But then I started thinking, well, why not do television.
Speaker 1: You make a lot more money, and you know, if
Speaker 1: my face didn't stop the clock, maybe I could give
Speaker 1: it a try. Yeah, you've got this great line in
Speaker 1: your book, which is I smile big. I smile a lot.
Speaker 1: Even my resting bitch face is a smile. Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1: So it's true. I feel so unnatural and looks so
Speaker 1: weird when I'm not smiling. We'll be right back. So
Speaker 1: life is good for this young married couple, both building
Speaker 1: their lives together and then quite literally building a life together.
Speaker 1: They have their first child, a daughter, Ellie. I've just
Speaker 1: gotten my job on the Today Show and I was
Speaker 1: I think five months pregnant on my first day at
Speaker 1: the Today's Show. So that's where I was when Ellie
Speaker 1: was born, and it was you know, it was a
Speaker 1: wonderful time because nobody likes a baby like the morning
Speaker 1: show audience, right where everyone feels infested in your pregnancy
Speaker 1: and excited and it's you know, it's a big milestone,
Speaker 1: not only for you and your family, but in a
Speaker 1: weird way for the audience, you know, where everything is
Speaker 1: kind of a shared experience on morning television with all
Speaker 1: these sort of para social relationships that are formed between
Speaker 1: viewers and and the people who are on television, even
Speaker 1: more so now because I never really talked about my
Speaker 1: kids when I was on the Today Show. I tried
Speaker 1: only at times when it seemed more natural, like showing
Speaker 1: a photo of Carrie or Ellie when they were born,
Speaker 1: or having them come in occasionally if Britney Spears was
Speaker 1: performing or something like that. But um, this idea of
Speaker 1: really really putting your kids out front was just not
Speaker 1: done back then as much as it is now because
Speaker 1: of social media and because you know, we live in
Speaker 1: an oversharing culture, right. So anyway, it was a very
Speaker 1: exciting time and everyone sort of celebrated Ellie's birth. It
Speaker 1: was it was wonderful, But I went through a period
Speaker 1: of time and I wanted to talk about this Danny,
Speaker 1: because again, I think this is something people are ashamed
Speaker 1: of and don't want to admit. I was really afraid
Speaker 1: of hurting Ellie. I was afraid of dropping her, but
Speaker 1: also kind of the feeling that you get some people
Speaker 1: get when they're on a tall balcony and they think, oh,
Speaker 1: I could just crawl over this railing and jump and
Speaker 1: end it all, and you're not going to do it,
Speaker 1: but you're scared that you could. I think some of
Speaker 1: your listeners will think I'm out of my mind, and
Speaker 1: others will say, I know exactly what you mean. And
Speaker 1: so I think that translated into what if I like
Speaker 1: Leevelly or I think it's this hyper vigilance you feel
Speaker 1: as a parent. It's almost a primitive thing as a mother,
Speaker 1: and it's almost like, gosh, you know, I have so
Speaker 1: much responsibility. This tiny being depends on me for everything.
Speaker 1: What if I fall short. I've never really thought of
Speaker 1: it that way, and the sort of need to be
Speaker 1: the you know, the good mother or the perfect mother.
Speaker 1: So I struggled with that a little bit, but then
Speaker 1: that went away. But I didn't really have anybody I
Speaker 1: could talk to you about it. And I wanted other
Speaker 1: mothers to say, oh, so this is normal. This is
Speaker 1: sort of a form of postpartum depression, and um, I'm
Speaker 1: not super weird having these scary thoughts, intrusive thoughts. During
Speaker 1: this time, Katie is living in a kind of dual landscape.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, she's more and more in the
Speaker 1: public eye. On the other hand, she's experiencing the vulnerability
Speaker 1: and newness of motherhood. And through the process of inhabiting
Speaker 1: these two very different spheres, she's getting to know herself
Speaker 1: in important ways. She enjoys, even embraces her new found fame.
Speaker 1: But nothing is ever entirely wonderful. It's complicated. We worship
Speaker 1: our celebrities in this culture, but we also don't see
Speaker 1: them as quite human somehow, and Katie, Katie is human.
Speaker 1: In fact, showing her humanness is her superpower. I think
Speaker 1: because the Today's show showcased sort of my whole personality
Speaker 1: and me and my sort of entirety, and it was working.
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, this is good. You know, I can
Speaker 1: do serious news, I can have fun I can be funny,
Speaker 1: I can be compassionate, I can sort of show, the
Speaker 1: multiple size of me. So I think in a way,
Speaker 1: because I was getting so much positive feedback, it bolstered
Speaker 1: my self confidence. And I think the only dichotomy between
Speaker 1: my public life because I was very much myself on TV,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what people responded to, was the
Speaker 1: strain of having someone sort of just explode like a
Speaker 1: rocket into the sky and everything that came with it,
Speaker 1: you know, being on the cover of magazines, you know,
Speaker 1: just that kind of weird stuff being written about and
Speaker 1: and and of course at the beginning, it was all
Speaker 1: very positive, you know, borderline fawning about me because I
Speaker 1: was sort of a little bit of a new breed
Speaker 1: of journalists on TV. I was normal looking, I was approachable,
Speaker 1: I was very girl next door. I wasn't particularly glamorous
Speaker 1: or unattainable. I was someone that people could really relate to.
Speaker 1: And I think probably the private side was some of
Speaker 1: the things that interfered with a normal life, and that is,
Speaker 1: you know, being recognized, which is fine at first, and
Speaker 1: then it just gets almost confusing, and it also creates,
Speaker 1: I think, this weird imbalance in a relationship. I was
Speaker 1: suddenly making so much money more than Jay and I
Speaker 1: ever envisioned either would be making and that I think
Speaker 1: can be quite destabilizing for a relationship. And back then,
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, Danny, a woman making more than
Speaker 1: her husband, believe it or not, was kind of an anomaly,
Speaker 1: not so much anymore, but back then, the expectation was
Speaker 1: that the man would always be the primary breadwinner, at least,
Speaker 1: you know, generally make more money than the woman. And
Speaker 1: so this was different. You know, both of us had
Speaker 1: mothers that didn't really work, and suddenly I him like
Speaker 1: bringing home the bacon and not so much the money,
Speaker 1: but also the attention that that created when we were
Speaker 1: out in the world. And the way people gravitate to
Speaker 1: quote unquote, you know, public figures or fame or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, hoping that that will kind of reflect back
Speaker 1: at them. But the way well known people are treated
Speaker 1: versus people who aren't necessarily in the public eye is
Speaker 1: pretty extraordinary and pretty fucked up. So you would be,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, at a party or at a reception,
Speaker 1: and what would happen if the two of you were
Speaker 1: out as a couple together. Well, I think too often
Speaker 1: people would kind of ignore Jay. He was far more
Speaker 1: intelligent and interesting, far more interesting than I, but they
Speaker 1: would sort of give him a cursory hello, and then
Speaker 1: they would turn back to me. And I think, by
Speaker 1: the way wives of famous men probably feel this all
Speaker 1: the time. People feel very diminished and it's gross the
Speaker 1: way people react. But fame is a very strange thing,
Speaker 1: and I think it makes people that crazy sometimes and
Speaker 1: forget their manners. And then of course I would spend
Speaker 1: my time worried that people were being attentive to Jay,
Speaker 1: and then that would affect my level of enjoyment wherever
Speaker 1: we were. It just made it hard. It's just one
Speaker 1: of those things that couples have to grapple with both
Speaker 1: that there's a big financial gap. You know, Jay was
Speaker 1: doing well, but I was just making like silly money.
Speaker 1: And I remember wanting to have a career because I
Speaker 1: never wanted to be dependent on anyone else because the
Speaker 1: power dynamic automatically changes, you know. I wanted an equal
Speaker 1: voice in my marriage. I wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: not be afraid. I didn't want to fear like someone
Speaker 1: leaving me and being left high and dry. There's a
Speaker 1: very good book called The Feminist Mistake by Leslie Bennett's
Speaker 1: that had a big impact on me and and the
Speaker 1: importance I think of women to be financially independent. So
Speaker 1: it created some challenges in our marriage, and I think
Speaker 1: it made Jay feel less then, which is the last
Speaker 1: thing in the world I would ever want him to feel.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: Katie and Jay do their best to maintain the balance
Speaker 1: in their relationship and family. They have another daughter. Katie's
Speaker 1: career is skyrocketing. Then Jay becomes ill. He has cancer,
Speaker 1: and the prognosis is grim. It becomes achingly clear that
Speaker 1: no matter how much Katie researches Jay's cancer and identifies
Speaker 1: experts and experimental treatments, he isn't going to survive this.
Speaker 1: Katie is shocked and devastated by the news of Jay's illness,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a twofold secret, a secret at home
Speaker 1: and a secret on the air. Privately, neither she nor
Speaker 1: Jay want the news to be true, so they avoid
Speaker 1: talking about it, as if perhaps talking about it will
Speaker 1: make it too real and publicly, well, this isn't something
Speaker 1: she wants to share with the public, and why should she.
Speaker 1: I felt it was so critically important to protect Jay's privacy.
Speaker 1: You know, this was a family matter. This was something
Speaker 1: that was really no one's business. And you know, I
Speaker 1: shared a lot on the Today's Show, but this wasn't
Speaker 1: mine to share. And as you can imagine, to go
Speaker 1: from thinking you have a healthy husband too, and the
Speaker 1: span of twenty four hours having a doctor say it's
Speaker 1: very bleak, he's got colin cancer and it's all over
Speaker 1: his liver. The prognosis is very bleak. Is is pretty astounding,
Speaker 1: and you know it was it was something that that
Speaker 1: I didn't want to share with the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: the world ultimately found out during the course of his illness,
Speaker 1: thanks to you know, find publications like the National Enquirer,
Speaker 1: but I just you know, it wasn't it wasn't for
Speaker 1: public consumption. And you know, my close friends obviously knew
Speaker 1: all about it. People on the show knew all about
Speaker 1: it and what was happening and what I was going through.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't going to be I mean, I became
Speaker 1: sort of Katie Kurk breathing widow because you know, you
Speaker 1: can't basically keep a secret it that your husband died, right,
Speaker 1: But during the course of his illness, it was just
Speaker 1: nobody's business, and it was jay. It wasn't me. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe if it's been me, you know, I would have
Speaker 1: been more public like Robin Roberts was with her cancer.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't my life and it wasn't my story
Speaker 1: to tell. I think we all have our public personas
Speaker 1: versus our private lives. And in a way, it was
Speaker 1: a sanctuary to be on national television and to be
Speaker 1: interviewing people about gosh, who knows what you know, the
Speaker 1: events of the day, or doing a cooking segment, because
Speaker 1: it required sort of my complete focus, and it's was
Speaker 1: the only time of the day where I wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: and worrying about Jay and trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a cure for risk cancer and doing research and calling
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies and universities and Israeli you know, pharmaceutical company,
Speaker 1: and calling Bird Vogelstein who discovered the Ashkenazi eugene at
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins, and just anyone I could find. So for
Speaker 1: those two hours, it was it was this escape from
Speaker 1: this nightmare that we found ourselves in, and so it
Speaker 1: was a relief to put on kind of my happy
Speaker 1: face and to be this Really I felt like I
Speaker 1: was an actor. I was taking on this role and
Speaker 1: it felt surreal. It didn't feel like my life. And
Speaker 1: then of course it was what was really happening behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. We all have this dichotomy between who we
Speaker 1: present ourselves or how we present ourselves, and what's really
Speaker 1: going on inside. And I think that was just the
Speaker 1: extreme case of that, where I was dying inside every
Speaker 1: single day. But I wanted. I wanted to have some
Speaker 1: kind of routine for my kids. I wanted to keep
Speaker 1: my job because I didn't know what was going to
Speaker 1: happen with Ja, and I wanted some escape from the
Speaker 1: relentless anguish of dealing with the terminal illness. Of course,
Speaker 1: the news does get out, as news tends to do.
Speaker 1: Katie's with Jay at the hospital at one point and
Speaker 1: a nurse points to the cover of a tabloid and says, look,
Speaker 1: you're in the paper. The headline is Katie's private pain,
Speaker 1: which is suddenly not so private, And the gossip isn't
Speaker 1: just happening in magazines, It's happening in their community too,
Speaker 1: among other families and acquaintances. I think a mother came
Speaker 1: up to me on the sidewalk near Ellie and Carrie's
Speaker 1: school and said, oh, you know, I heard. I heard
Speaker 1: it's really bad, as if it's been the subject of
Speaker 1: you know, after school gossip among the mobs, And it
Speaker 1: just really infuriated me that someone was gossiping about my
Speaker 1: husband and whether he was going to live or die.
Speaker 1: It just seems so disgusting to me, And I just
Speaker 1: remember feeling so infuriated at the idea that that Jay's
Speaker 1: health was the subject of of their chatter as they were,
Speaker 1: you know, having coffee in the morning after drop off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something sort of like carnivorous about it or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good word. The period of time that that
Speaker 1: Jay was sick was how long? About nine months? Nine months.
Speaker 1: During these nine months, the family spends a lot of
Speaker 1: time together, particularly at their country house, which is a
Speaker 1: happy place for Jay. At one point, Katie does have
Speaker 1: to travel for work, though she's off to London to
Speaker 1: cover the funeral of Princess Diana, a woman she had
Speaker 1: met and admired. As Katie is there, reporting on the
Speaker 1: scene that broke the whole world's heart of the two
Speaker 1: young boys walking solemnly behind their mother's casket, Katie is stricken.
Speaker 1: She's having a hard time holding it together. It was miserable.
Speaker 1: And you know, that was sort of when the professional
Speaker 1: and personal worlds collided. When you see the premature death
Speaker 1: of a young, vibrant woman and her little boys walking
Speaker 1: behind her casket with I think a little card that
Speaker 1: said Mummy, I believe, and it just felt too real
Speaker 1: and it was just extremely hard. Mean, it was so
Speaker 1: such a sad time for so many people when Princess
Speaker 1: Diana died, and a sad time for me because I
Speaker 1: had met her and admired her. But it just reminded
Speaker 1: me of what I was facing in the not too
Speaker 1: distant future. Yeah, and what your girls were going to
Speaker 1: be facing. Yeah, of course, of course. And you know,
Speaker 1: whether a death is sudden or a death takes nine
Speaker 1: months or a few years, you know, with some cancer diagnoses,
Speaker 1: it's just so painful. And I think the process of
Speaker 1: seeing someone slip away slowly. And you know, my husband
Speaker 1: was so young and vibrant and so fun in the
Speaker 1: life of the party, and such a good athlete, and
Speaker 1: you know, had been a pilot in the Navy, and
Speaker 1: he was just this living, exuberant person. And to see
Speaker 1: what answer does to a healthy person, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just devastating. It's devastating for the people who are witnessing it.
Speaker 1: And of course, as Jay said, having cancer is the
Speaker 1: loneliest experience in the world because I think, no matter what,
Speaker 1: nobody really can understand what that feels like. Jay dies
Speaker 1: at the age of forty two. Sometime after his death,
Speaker 1: Katie finds a list he had made of all their
Speaker 1: combined assets, a very meticulous and organized list about life, insurance,
Speaker 1: and property and capital improvements. The list, Katie notices, is
Speaker 1: dated three months before Jay died. He was trying to
Speaker 1: put his affairs in order. He knew, so did she,
Speaker 1: but they didn't talk about it. It's one of my
Speaker 1: great regrets that we didn't say, you know, what are
Speaker 1: your wishes, what are your hopes for the girls? How
Speaker 1: can we make sure you stay present somehow in their lives.
Speaker 1: Do you want to write them a letter, you want
Speaker 1: to give them a video message? We never allowed ourselves
Speaker 1: to go there, you know, which is another reason I
Speaker 1: named the book going There. It's also about having hard conversations,
Speaker 1: and the closest we got was when we were in
Speaker 1: Millbrook one weekend and it was a beautiful day and
Speaker 1: the girls were splashing around in the pool and you know,
Speaker 1: it was just one of those perfect afternoons. And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm gonna be able to come
Speaker 1: to this house if you're not here. That was the
Speaker 1: only thing that I had said. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: I hope it will be full of happy memories. And
Speaker 1: that was the closest we came to accepting that we
Speaker 1: weren't going to be able to fix it. And I think,
Speaker 1: Gosh talk about lack of control and feeling powerless and
Speaker 1: wanting to control the world. I thought, she, if I
Speaker 1: just somehow get to the right doctors or find the
Speaker 1: right research or clinical trial, I'm going to be able
Speaker 1: to fix this. And I thought, for some reason TV
Speaker 1: would ignore me from having something like this happened. I
Speaker 1: don't know where that magical thinking came from, but you know,
Speaker 1: I just really wish that we had had more honest
Speaker 1: conversations that we were just I think we were both
Speaker 1: too afraid. He was too afraid to honestly disappoint me
Speaker 1: and leave me, and I was too afraid to talk
Speaker 1: to him about the fact that he might not be
Speaker 1: around and he might not win this battle. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of families really wrestle with this um
Speaker 1: kind of this trying to find a bridge between hope
Speaker 1: and reality and hope and acceptance. It's really, I think
Speaker 1: the hardest thing in the world to navigate well, and
Speaker 1: there's still a culture of silence around it. Yeah. After
Speaker 1: Jay's death, Katie endures a series of tragedies and losses,
Speaker 1: almost like dominoes, one after the other. Katie's father had,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to her, been suffering from Parkinson's. In an attempt
Speaker 1: to protect her, her parents kept us from her because
Speaker 1: they felt she had all she could handle on her plate.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later, her sister Emily is diagnosed
Speaker 1: with pancreatic cancer and she dies at the age of
Speaker 1: fifty four. Her sister in law two dies at age
Speaker 1: fifty four. The loss is enormous and to the grieving,
Speaker 1: but Katie perseveres. She goes there, she heals, She takes
Speaker 1: care of her daughters. She eventually remarries her husband, John,
Speaker 1: and she continues to have a robust and prolific career.
Speaker 1: At one point, she has the liberating epiphany that she
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be forever popular and well liked. She
Speaker 1: no longer needs to uphold a certain image, No longer
Speaker 1: needs to be afraid to have the hard conversations. Grief
Speaker 1: and loss I think makes you acutely aware that life
Speaker 1: is fragile and we're all terminal. And I think it
Speaker 1: makes you appreciate every day a little more. I mean,
Speaker 1: you still fall into these traps where you take things
Speaker 1: for granted, and you you're not as grateful as you
Speaker 1: should be to wake up in the morning and to
Speaker 1: feel good or feel fine. But I think that I've
Speaker 1: always been a pretty authentic person and true to myself.
Speaker 1: And this idea of of just yearning for approval and
Speaker 1: yearning for popularity and for people to like me when
Speaker 1: they don't really even know me um is just foolhardy
Speaker 1: and feudal. And I think that I have tried to
Speaker 1: embrace every stage of my life, whether it was in
Speaker 1: my forties or in my fifties, and now I'm in
Speaker 1: my sixties, and John really keeps me grounded. Whenever I'll
Speaker 1: bitch about getting older, he's gonna He'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're seventy, you're going to say I wish I
Speaker 1: was sixty five, So enjoy it while you can. He
Speaker 1: always says things like, you're never going to get any younger.
Speaker 1: So you know, I have a great partner who is
Speaker 1: incredibly supportive and fun and just good company and just
Speaker 1: you know, I just love being around. A lot of
Speaker 1: my life is in my rear view mirror, but I
Speaker 1: want to continue doing and challenging myself and asking questions
Speaker 1: and hopefully being of service in any way I can,
Speaker 1: whether it's through raising money for cancer research or hopefully
Speaker 1: helping people contextualize the complicated world we're living in, or
Speaker 1: just giving them some information that will lead to a
Speaker 1: deeper understanding. I feel so fortunate. I feel guilty actually
Speaker 1: that I've been so blessed, and there's so much suffering
Speaker 1: in the world. So how do you combine enjoying life
Speaker 1: but also being of service and supporting other people who
Speaker 1: aren't in the same situation as you. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of the constant battle we all face,
Speaker 1: and so I'm plagued by those things. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to really have a life of purpose for
Speaker 1: as long as I can. And I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: person that I don't think I'll ever be able to retire.
Speaker 1: It's just not in my d n a. I have
Speaker 1: to feel productive. I think I got that from my mom.
Speaker 1: Katie starts a new company, Katie Correct Media. She has
Speaker 1: a newsletter, a podcast, a fantastic presence on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: a best selling book. She's nothing if not productive. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited to learn something new every day, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm learning about thermonuclear weapons when I'm reading articles about
Speaker 1: the Russian military and getting a deeper understanding and reminding
Speaker 1: myself of what happened. Why was it called the Iron Curtain?
Speaker 1: So like Google is my best friend, I look things up.
Speaker 1: I just have this insatiable hunger for knowledge, and so
Speaker 1: if I can share that, that makes me so happy.
Speaker 1: And then but also I don't want to be so
Speaker 1: myopic that I I don't appreciate the people in my life.
Speaker 1: You know, Chase said him when he was sick. Now,
Speaker 1: this was at the height of our careers, when we're
Speaker 1: really focused on our careers and obviously our family. But
Speaker 1: you know that early forties, right cuts when you really
Speaker 1: are operating on all four cylinders. I always get that
Speaker 1: expression wrong, But he said, nothing really matters but your
Speaker 1: family and friends. And that was such an important reminder
Speaker 1: that nobody is going to give a rat's ass when
Speaker 1: you die right, you're If you're lucky, you'll get a
Speaker 1: mention in the obituaries, and maybe you'll have to pay
Speaker 1: for it, right, Who knows. But the things that lead
Speaker 1: to a rich and fulfilling life are your relationships, so
Speaker 1: I try to be mindful of that as well. It's
Speaker 1: a work in progress every day to find the right
Speaker 1: balance of what is a meaningful life. But I'm still
Speaker 1: doing it and still working on it, and you know,
Speaker 1: still loving every minute. We can never see the future.
Speaker 1: We have no crystal ball. We just don't know what's
Speaker 1: coming around the bend. All we can do always is
Speaker 1: the best with what we have. Here's Katie reading a
Speaker 1: beautiful passage from her memoir, an Elegy to a time
Speaker 1: of innocence. With two little girls and all four of
Speaker 1: our parents alive and thriving, we were in the happiness bubble,
Speaker 1: buffer generationally by the people we loved most in the world.
Speaker 1: Nothing made my heart sing like seeing a young couple
Speaker 1: pushing a stroller alongside vibrant grandparents. My mom would visit
Speaker 1: and come with me to pick up Ellie from school.
Speaker 1: My parents stayed with us in Moriytown and Leader Millbrook.
Speaker 1: We love double dating with them. Jay's equally fun folks
Speaker 1: had a house in Rhogah's Beach. His siblings kids were
Speaker 1: around the same age as ours, so it was always
Speaker 1: cousin central when we visited. There's a funny photo of
Speaker 1: me and Jay's sisters Barbara and Claire, and his brother
Speaker 1: Chris's wife Cathy, all pregnant at the same time. They
Speaker 1: had a piano and a fireplace. We bust out the
Speaker 1: chips and salts and watch old movies like How Green
Speaker 1: Was My Valley and Mrs Minever. At the time, it
Speaker 1: didn't occur to me that one day the bubble would burst.
Speaker 1: That's what bubbles do. Family Secrets is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Molly Zukour is the story editor and
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a
Speaker 1: family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode.
Speaker 1: Our number is one eight eight Secret zero. That's the
Speaker 1: number zero. You can also find on Instagram at Danny writer.
Speaker 1: And if you'd like to know more about the story
Speaker 1: that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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