Connie chung reflects on life, marriage and groundbreaking career | members only

Connie Chung, 78, is a barrier-breaking TV journalist — the first woman to coanchor the _CBS Evening News_ and one of the few women among the “boys on the bus” covering the 1972 presidential

campaign. Now she has a new memoir, _Connie_, that offers an entertaining tour through her childhood with Chinese-immigrant parents (she was their 10th and youngest child), a look back at

her remarkable career and a peek into her marriage to Maury Povich. AARP spoke with her about the book, and she revealed an appealingly down-to-earth sense of humor, particularly when it

comes to growing older (and shorter!).​ _This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can also read an excerpt from __her memoir here__, where she describes landing her first

job at CBS._ WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO WRITE YOUR MEMOIR? It was truly tortuous. I didn’t have journals, but I had a lot of material. I had literally kept my calendar books from 1970 to 2024. And

I had scripts [of reporting coverage] … and a zillion photographs. The scripts were the most helpful, because they were literally the scripts that I wrote covering George McGovern when he

was running for president, or during Watergate.… It was tedious [going through all the boxes of material] but it sure did trigger memories. In Chung's new memoir, "Connie,"

she looks back on her life and remarkable career. Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing ACCORDING TO THE BOOK, YOU WERE QUIET AND SHY AS A CHILD. HOW’D YOU GROW UP TO BE SO BOLD? I grew up

with four older sisters, and they thought that all of them were my mother. My mother was not nearly as dogmatic as the sisters. They told me what to do, what to say. Really, they were

overpowering. [Later] when they were off at work, or getting engaged, getting married — as they peeled off, I was at the core of the onion, and I could finally emerge. My parents raised five

ballsy women. YOU WRITE ABOUT HOW MCGOVERN ONCE TRIED TO KISS YOU, AND JIMMY CARTER PRESSED HIS LEG AGAINST YOURS AT A BLACK-TIE DINNER. WERE THOSE THINGS SHOCKING TO YOU BACK THEN? Quite

shocking. I never thought that something like that could happen. But frankly, after thinking about it in later years, I wasn’t surprised, because we all read about all the presidents who

were philanderers. There were rumors, but reporters, the all-male brigade, kept it under wraps, right? [In the book, Chung says the incident with Carter happened in the 1980s “after

President Carter had told _Playboy_ magazine he had ‘looked on a lot of women with lust’ and had ‘committed adultery in [his] heart many times.’ I think I saw that look.”]