Cokie Roberts (born December 27, 1943, New Orleans, Louisiana) is a journalist and author, best known for her work on National Public Radio. She also appeared on the Sunday morning ABC News program This Week with David Brinkley, along with Sam Donaldson and George Will. She and Donaldson co-hosted the show as This Week after David Brinkley retired.
She is the daughter of the late Hale Boggs and his wife Lindy Claiborne Boggs. Boggs was Majority Leader in the House of Representatives at the time the twin engine aircraft in which he was traveling crashed over a remote section of Alaska. The site of the crash has never been located, and the bodies of Boggs and the three other men on the plane with him have never been recovered. Her mother subsequently replaced her father in Congress and served there for many years. Her sister, the late Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton, New Jersey and a candiate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey, and died of cancer. Her brother Tommy Boggs - who coined the nickname "Cokie," because he couldn't say "Corinne" - is an influential Washington, D.C. attorney and lobbyist.
In 1966, Cokie married fellow journalist Steven V. Roberts, formerly with The New York Times. He is Jewish and she is Roman Catholic, so they had to get married after sunset on a Saturday evening in order not to conflict with either of their religion's sabbaths. Cokie and Steve Roberts lecture and have written books together, most recently From This Day Forward in 2000. They have two children: a son, Lee, and a daughter, Rebecca; and four grandchildren.
A 1964 graduate in political science from Wellesley College, Roberts received a 1985 Distinguished Alumnae Achievement Award in recognition of "excellence and distinction in professional pursuits." She is the recipient of over 15 honorary degrees and was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation.
In June 2002, Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was treated by lumpectomy, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy and has remained cancer-free since.
Roberts has won numerous awards at NPR, including the highest honor in public radio, the Edward R. Murrow Award. She was also the first broadcast journalist to win the highly prestigious Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for coverage of Congress. Roberts is the recipient of numerous other broadcasting awards, including a 1991 Emmy Award for her contribution to the ABC News special, "Who is Ross Perot?"
She is the author of the national bestseller We Are Our Mother's Daughters as well as Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation. The latter book, published in 2004, explores the lives of the women behind the men that wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
A native of New Orleans, Roberts' childhood home on Bourbon Street, in which her mother still lives, suffered moderate damage from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
