Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Kuralt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He worked as a reporter for the Charlotte News in his home state before moving to the CBS network as a writer, where he became well-known as the host of the Eyewitness to History series. He traveled around the world as a journalist for the network, including stints as CBS's Chief Latin American Correspondent and then as Chief West Coast Correspondent.

From 1967 to 1980, he produced the regular "On the Road" human-interest segment for the CBS Evening News, and hosted the CBS Sunday Morning program from 1979 to 1994. His features often captured the beauty of the American countryside, sometimes using images and sounds with no voice-overs to effectively capture the scene. During his career, he won three Peabody awards and ten Emmy awards for journalism.

At age 60, Kuralt surprised many by retiring from CBS News. At the time, he was the longest tenured on-air personality in the News division. Sadly, his retirement was brief as complications from lupus took his life three years later.

Kuralt never forgot his roots, as one of his books was titled, North Carolina is My Home. Kuralt's young brother Wallace, who died in December of 2003, was also well-known in his home state, having been the owner of "The Intimate Bookshop" on Franklin Street in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campustown for many years.

By request in his will, Charles Kuralt was buried on the UNC-CH grounds in Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. The University uses a Kuralt speech in its television commercials and displays many of his awards and a re-creation of his office in its Journalism School.

Two years later, Kuralt's personal reputation came under scrutiny when a decades-long affair was made public by a Montana woman with whom Kuralt apparently had a second, "shadow" family while his official and legal family lived in New York City. She asserted that the house in Montana had been willed to her.