Barbara Walters is a pioneering figure in the world of broadcast journalism. In addition to being the first woman to co-host a morning news program (The Today Show in 1974) and an evening news program (ABC Evening news in 1976), she created the wildly popular ABC daytime talk show, The View, which she appeared on for more than 15 years. She’s also known for her legendary celebrity interviews and her ability to get some of the most famous people in the world to cry. But where is Barbara Walters now in 2022? Is she still alive? Here’s a look into her life and health, as well as an overview of her incredible career.
Barbara Walters Is Still Alive
Barbara Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 25, 1929. This makes her 92 years old today.
Her father was a nightclub manager and producer, which helped Walters hone the interview skills she’d later be famous for. “I had to make friends, be alert, ask questions, and I was never in awe of celebrities, because they worked for my father,” Walters explained in a 2014 interview with Variety.
Walters has been married four times to three different men. She married her first husband, a business executive, in 1955, but the union was annulled after only 11 months. Her second husband was theater producer Lee Guber, and that union lasted from 1963 until 1976. Guber and Walters had one child together, an adopted daughter named Jacqueline, who was born and adopted in 1968.
Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television, was Walter’s third and fourth husband. They tied the knot in 1981, divorced in 1984, then remarried in 1986. They divorced for the second time six years later, in 1992.
Walters later admitted that for all her career success, she wasn’t as skilled at maintaining romantic relationships. “I don’t think that I was very good at marriage,” Walters said in a 2014 interview with ABC News. “It may be that my career was just too important. It may have been that I was a difficult person to be married to, and I just seem to be better alone. I’m not lonely, I’m alone.”
She Officially Retired In 2014
Walters moved to New York City after graduating from college and found work as a publicist and a magazine writer before settling into TV news. She started at The Today Show in 1961 as a writer and researcher, then slowly worked her way up to being a reporter and eventually co-host.
In addition to her jobs on The Today Show and the ABC Evening News, Walters spent more than three decades co-hosting the ABC’s newsmagazine show, 20/20. She also hosted The Barbara Walters Specials, which featured her trademark celebrity interviews. Over the years, Walters interviewed almost every celebrity you could imagine, from old-school legends such as Bing Crosby and Bette Davis to modern stars like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey.
Walters says that in order to be a good interviewer, you must always be paying attention. “You have to listen to what the person says,” the anchor said in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation. “I’ve often said it’s not the first question, it’s the follow up. ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘Why did you say that?’ You can’t just read the questions, especially if they’re not prepared by you, and then just go down the line with the questions….All of these are things you learn with time and also have to have an instinct for.”
Walters has won numerous awards and accolades over her decades-long career, including three Daytime Emmy Awards, one Primetime Emmy Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women’s Agenda, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the News and Documentary Emmy Awards, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. She was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989.
In 2014, when she was 85 years old and still working on The View, Walters finally decided to call it quits and retire.
Barbara Walters’ Health
In 2010, Walters underwent open-heart surgery to repair a broken aortic valve. The procedure went well and Walters was back to work on The View not long after making a full recovery.
But since her retirement, Walters has struggled with issues common to advanced age. Some reports have alleged that the 92-year-old was diagnosed with dementia and has experienced a significant cognitive decline in the last few years, however, the claims have not been confirmed by Walters or one of her representatives. While we can’t know for sure, it’s likely that Walter’s daughter is by her mom’s side. In a 2014 interview on Oprah’s Master Class, the 20/20 star said:
“My daughter said to me recently, ‘Mom, when you have Alzheimer’s, you can come down and live with me. Not if you have Alzheimer’s, but, Mom, when you have Alzheimer’s.’ I take that as a very loving compliment.”