Her turn to talk! Katie Couric revealed new details about her years in the spotlight and her varied interactions with celebrities in her new book, Going There.
The journalist, 64, delved into a slew of topics in the memoir, which was released on Tuesday, October 26. From her former Today colleague Matt Lauer’s sexual misconduct scandal to her controversial 2016 interview with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Couric did not hold back.
Television “made my dreams come true,” the broadcaster wrote in the book’s prologue. “But it is not the whole story, and it is not the whole me. The book is.”
The author addressed the allegations that led to her former Today cohost Lauer, 63, being fired from the morning show in November 2017. A female colleague accused him of inappropriate sexual behavior while NBC was covering the Winter Olympics in Russia three years earlier, and in October 2019, she claimed that he had raped her, which he repeatedly denied.
“We have no relationship,” Couric said of Lauer during an October 19 appearance on Today, noting that the ordeal was “really, really hard and it took me a long time to process what was going on.”
The Virginia native detailed the aftermath in her memoir by publishing text messages she and Lauer exchanged. “I think I used those because I thought they were very illustrative of how our relationship devolved and ultimately deteriorated,” she shared with Today. “I thought that was a powerful way to … really let the reader into my thought process and as I got more and more information, how it was harder and harder for me to reconcile these two sides [of him].”
Couric did her own research on the allegations amid the fallout. “The side of Matt I knew was the side of Matt I think you all knew. He was kind, generous, considerate, a good colleague,” she recalled. “As I got more information and learned more about what was going on behind the scenes. And then I did some of my own reporting, talked to people, tried to excavate what had been going on. It was really devastating and also disgusting.”
She added: “I think what I realized is that there was a side of Matt I never really knew. I tried to understand why he behaved the way he did, and why he was so reckless, and callous, and honestly abusive to other women.”
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Couric also covered her personal life in the memoir. She married her first husband, Jay Monahan, in January 1989. They welcomed daughters Ellie and Carrie in July 1991 and January 1996, respectively. The attorney died of colorectal cancer in January 1998 at age 42. She later tied the knot with financier John Molner in June 2014.
Going There is out now. Scroll through the gallery below to read revelations from Couric’s book.
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