Couric attended the University of Virginia, then landed her first job at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C. And even then, she was waging a battle with food.
With the help of a therapist, she had a grip on her condition by her early 20s, though “it didn’t mean that I didn’t still have issues and feel bad about myself.”
But since then, she said, “I’ve learned how to have a much healthier relationship with food, and how to enjoy my life without obsessing about food.”
She said she was glad she had shared with viewers her ordeal with bulimia, “because it’s so commonplace.”
And it’s not the first time Couric has let the public in on a personal ordeal. Her audience shared her pain from the death of her husband, Jay Monahan, of colon cancer in 1998. The tragedy led Couric, then a co-anchor of “Today,” to become an advocate for colon cancer awareness and for colonoscopies. In 2000, she underwent a colonoscopy on the air.
“The educational aspect far outweighed any personal embarrassment I might have felt,” she explained. “I had just lost my husband at 42 to this No. 2 cancer killer of men and women. I had a bully pulpit from which I could implore people to take steps that could potentially save their lives. It was a no-brainer.”
In the future, viewers of “Katie” can expect her to confide in them again when it feels right.
“I don’t think there are any huge revelations about myself that need to be shared or would be appropriate to share,” she said. “But I’m trying to strike the right balance of talking about my situation, but not focusing on it so much that I’m being put on the couch.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE _ Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier
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