Throughout their 53-year marriage, Cokie and Steven Roberts declared they were "crazy nuts" about each other, and in his memoir, Cokie: A Life Well Lived, his sorrow at her 2019 death is unmistakable, as is his devotion to her memory. Her career as a renowned journalist spanned more than 40 years, but she was foremost "a wife and mother, a sister and daughter, a neighbor and friend, a real person with a real dog who did her own grocery shopping."
Cokie repeatedly shattered glass ceilings, including as a "founding mother of NPR," and as the first permanent woman on Sunday morning's This Week roundtable, early in her 32 years at ABC News. The daughter of Louisiana Democratic Representative Hale Boggs and Lindy Boggs, who succeeded him, Cokie grew up among Washington leaders and loved the Capitol. A fiercely bipartisan journalist and a committed feminist, "she always asked more questions about funding for mammograms than for MX missiles," Roberts notes, and she relentlessly supported workplace equality.
Fairness was the basis of their marriage, too. Deeply in love, Cokie, a devout Catholic, and Steve, who is Jewish, almost didn't marry, but "we shared values if not theologies," Roberts says. Determined to honor both religions, she soon was dubbed "the best Jew in the family," famed for her Hanukah parties and seder dinners, while never missing Sunday Mass. Cokie cites countless professional achievements, but these are overshadowed by the eulogistic recollections of colleagues and friends. Roberts hopes these stories "inspire you to be more like Cokie, to be a good person, to lead a good life." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.