Going There

I'd fall apart. You're probably thinking that voice sounds familiar, because that's Katie Couric, journalist, news anchor and most recently, author of the number one New York Times bestselling memoir Going There. Sometimes when someone is very well known, we think, well, we think we know them. But if there's one thing that hosting this show has taught me, it's that we all have secret in our lives, every single one of us. Katie's is a story of grit, resilience, and grace, even

while living under the microscope that is fame. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. So described for me the landscape of your childhood, Well, it's a very beautiful landscape. And sometimes I feel guilty. As I've gotten older and met more people, Danny, I realized that so many of us don't have the kind of loving family I had.

I had really pretty typical in middle class nuclear family raising kids in the fifties and sixties and early seventies. My parents. My mom was a stay at home mom, which I think resulted in some frustration for her. My dad was a newspaperman who then went into public relations because I think it was hard to support a family of four as a single breadwinner as a print reporter. And I'm the youngest of four, so that very much

informed the person I became. I was sort of the entertainer, the cut up, you know, the one that would be performing for my sisters, gentlemen callers. I was the one cracking jokes at the dinner table. My mom would always laugh and my father would say eleanor don't encourage her. My parents were ambitious for us, but not helicopter parents. They wanted us to do well. Education was really emphasized in my family. It was very important for us to

go to a good college and do well academically. I did less well than my siblings because I think as the last kid, I sort of had more finely tuned emotional intelligence and kind of could get away with being charming and funny and sweet talking my teachers. It was a really happy childhood. No big traumas grandparents died as grandparents do. Um, some sickness and my parents, but much later in life I would say, from the age of

zero to forty, I was very blessed. My husband Jay, my late husband, used to say, I was born on a sunny day and a lot of things really went my way for the most part. I grew up in Arlington, Virginia, in a suburb just outside Washington, d C. It was teaming with kids riding their bikes, playing street baseball, Capture the flag, crab apple fights. Um, you know, just very idyllic, you know, playing red rover, red rover and red light

green light, catching lightning bugs at night. It almost sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting as I talk of it now, I've never heard of crab apple fights. Well, you know, we had them little We just throw them at our neighbors, and especially at the boys. As Katie grows up in this idyllic atmosphere, she learns that sweet talking her teachers will only get her so far academically. When she's a junior in high school, she buckles down, commits to her

school work, and gets straight a's. It's an important year for colleges, and she has her heart set on attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I got rejected, not even weight listed, for crying out loud, and was particularly painful because my sisters had both gone there. My sister Emily was five Beta Kappa and Sigma Si, which was a science honorary society that I had never heard of. My sister Kiki also did really well there, went on to

Harvard Graduate School. She got her master's and landscape architect at the Harvard School of Design. And um, Yeah, it was really embarrassing and mortifying that I just got rejected, full stop. When I looked back on it, Danny, there were other moments when I was disappointed, but they sound so silly in hindsight, you know. I remember, I think it was in junior high and the cheerleading team. I remember this so vividly, was time for the cheerly need

squad to pick the captain and co captain. And I was one of the one of two girls who had been accepted to be a cheerleader in eighth grade. Most to them were ninth grade. I walked in and I heard, you know, there was a lot of whispering, and of course I wanted to be captain. Hello, And the gym teacher, Mrs Beats, who was in charge of the cheerleader said that she was going to pick the captain and co captain, which really just was an affront to my democratic principles.

You know that the gym teacher is not supposed to pick the captain and co captain. I was beside myself. I was so upset. I came home. I was both furious and just terribly upset, and I remember thinking, that is so unfair, Like the teacher isn't allowed to do this. This is a democratic process. The cheerleaders are supposed to

pick the captain and co captain. Isn't that funny? And that was a big upsetting event in my life, but in retrospect probably really important because you know what they say about you have to learn how to deal with disappointment. You have to learn that life is not fair. You have to learn to say, Okay, well that happened. I've got to move on, and I did, despite its sting.

Katie bounces back from the cheerleading incident and continues to be involved at school in extracurriculars and keeping her head up. She's popular and well liked, but when she receives that thin envelope from Smith rejecting her, the news is catastrophic for her and opens a fault line that she hadn't known was there. She becomes bulimic. I was bulimick for probably a total of on and off for maybe six or seven years in my sort of late teens to my mid to late twenties. But it was very sporadic.

Sometimes I would do it, you know, several times a week, even a few times a day. Sometime I wouldn't do it at all. So it was very off and on, and I think, gosh, what was that about. I think it was about not measuring up, about not meeting expectations, about being less than not being perfect, um probably feeling guilty that I hadn't applied myself more not following in

my sister's footsteps. I think that's what it was about, and then punishing myself and being angry at myself for all the things that I didn't do versus being happy about everything I did to right now, that makes a lot of sense, and you know so much about attempting to control the universe and oneself. I think I also had, you know, really bad body image. You know, I was a very scrawny, skinny kid. I remember like I weighed forty five pounds when I was in fourth grade. You know,

It's little and wiry, very athletic. And then I really hated going through puberty. You know, I've been a really fast runner in elementary school. They used to pull me out of fourth grade to run against the sixth grade boys, and I was so proud of that. When I reached puberty, I felt like my body was betrayed me in a way. I wasn't as fast. I was more curvy, which I didn't like. I didn't really love, you know, having breasts.

And I grew up in a family where diet culture was really strong, where my sisters were always on a diet and my mom was always on a diet, and there was always tab and fresca and cottage cheese around was really during that era, And so I think that because I wasn't super thin or tall and willowy, I also felt very bad about myself and my appearance. You know, I was a little more true. I was kind of your classic mes amorph no muscular, but not super thin

and not tall. I was probably five two or three. I'm now barely five four. So I think I was also responding to this cultural pressure and societal pressure to look a certain way, you know, to look like Twiggy or look like the models in seventeen magazine, which I did not. Did anybody know that you were going through this during those years? Not really. My mom certainly didn't. She would have been just so upset, you know, because

it's so phys physically damaging. I remember mentioning it to my sister, my oldest sister, at one point, and her confiding to me that she had at times been blimic, which I thought was super interesting that, you know, there they think there might be some genetic predisposition to eating disorders that are then exacerbated by iron Man. But no, it was pretty secretive a very small group of people. If anyone knew about it, it was shrouded in shame

and secrecy and self loathing. Where their secrecy their shame, Where their secrecy, there's silence. This toxic trio. Secrecy, shame, silence form a vicious cycle, one that is very hard to break. Of course, Katie doesn't want to talk about it, and when one roommate confronts her about her bolimia, she

quickly moves out. But then she is shaken to the core by the tragic death of Karen Carpenter, a singer songwriter beloved by a whole generation who died as a result of her anorexia at the age of thirty two. I mean, I think it was a whole confluence of things. I think that that was very shocking when Karen Carpenter died. You know, that was sort of the music my middle school years. And I think the fact that this could actually kill you, I mean, she was antarextic versus bliemic um,

and maybe she was both. I was just believe it. But it really was crushing when Karen Carpenter died, and I thought, holy smokes, you can actually die from doing this. And I think it just kind of shook me to my core. And I thought I'm not gonna do this anymore. I never wanted to do it. Like you, It's almost like you're so restricted in your diet then you do something that's quote unquote bad. You know, it's really weird how we ascribe moral judgments to food. You know, I

was really bad today. I was really good today. And I think once I would set up these impossible you know, I'm only going to eat an apple and a coffee yogurt today, you know, and I'm going to try to jump hope and one of those suits that makes you sweat. Then if I ate almost I got to the point where I had a piece of gum that wasn't sugarless. I'd say, I blew it. I blew it. I'm a terrible person. Well, I'm gonna have to start tomorrow. I'm going to eat everything I can, and then I'd feel

guilty and then I throw it up. I mean, it was just that kind of cycle. And that cycle is happening during a period of time where you go to college and you start your career. It's like it's during a period of time where in the outside world you're beginning to you know, find your footing and succeed and I think it's true of so many people, I mean maybe all people in some way, that there's this kind of at times in our lives, this kind of shadow life that's going on, that is the other side of

what people see. Appearances can be deceiving. Yeah, I mean it was an exciting time for me, but I was it was always this kind of little thing on my shoulder. Oh what are you going to eat today? Oh, you had two cups of instant hot chocolate when you were at ABC News, when you were working the overnights. You're terrible person. But it's terrible, Like why why do we do this to ourselves? I just don't know. How can we have a healthier relationship with food? Because I enjoy food,

you know, I enjoy eating. I love trying new restaurants, and I like the social aspect of eating. But it's never it's always accompanied by guilt or shame or the judgment that I have no discipline or I shouldn't have eaten that. Throughout this period of time, Katie's dating. She's a young journalist on the rise, and though her career has come first, she reaches a point at which she

wants to find a partner a real partner. I had dated a out in my twenties, all sorts of different people, but I had never gotten serious because I knew that my job required me to move to different markets, and I never wanted to put down roots, say in Miami, where I dated a policeman, which was kind of a fun different experience for me, one that my mom did not approve of at all, to you know, going out in Atlanta with the TV director and then an artist

who lived in the apartment below me. But I felt like I wanted to find a partner, and so I'm very intentional about most things in my life. When I want something, I figure out how I'm going to get it. And I was invited to a party and it was full of like young twenty very young girls in their early twenties, some even college dudents. Because I figured I was going to meet some interesting people, especially some young professionals, and I remember meeting Jay. We started talking and I

was immediately attracted to him. We just sort of started this kind of fun conversation. I said I was the oldest person at the party. He said, I doubt it. And we showed each other our driver's license, and indeed He was a year older than I, but we were born two days apart. I was January seven, he was January nine. Anyway, I just found him fun and funny and intriguing and nice, and um, I asked him out on our first date. I had his business card. I

called him. He hadn't called me for a few days, and I said, I thought you were going to call me, and he said, well, apparently I didn't have to. And I thought, oh, what a cocky son of a bitch. Okay, So we ended up having dinner at a Thai restaurant, and you know, he was sort of I told him pretty early on in our relationship he was everything I was looking for in a partner. He was very smart, He was dedicated and devoted to his family. He was one of seven kids. He was kind of the go

to and his family. He was, you know, problem solver. He was funny, he was charming. He had this kind of old world elegance about him. He lived in a basement apartment in Georgetown, but somehow it was just beautifully decorated. You know, he had nice antiques and he just had a real sense of style and very good taste, and that appealed to me a lot. But of course the most appealing thing was he was just really a kind person,

fun to be around, intellectually stimulating. We talked about leon Uris's Trinity and he gave me sort of the history of Northern Ireland over lunch, and I was thinking, oh wow, this is this guy is intense and serious. I really fell head over heels for him, and you know, he was on the partner track at his law firm. Not long after that seminal time meal, Katie and Jay get together and get married. As Jay is advancing in his law career, Katie is doing the same in her career

as a television journalist. She's dedicated to her work, she's good at it, and she's solidifying her goals for the future. I definitely saw myself as sort of the quintessential a woman who wanted to quote unquote have it all, but who wanted to, you know, have a fulfilling career. I think because my mom didn't, and I think my goal when I was a local news reporter in Miami, I used to say, I want to be a network correspondent by the time I'm thirty, and so I had a

very concrete goal that was my aspiration. So I saw us as a two career couple. Maybe I'd be a national correspondent working at NBC in Washington or one of the networks, or covering Capitol Hill or the White House. I just thought that I would be doing something that was exciting and interesting and lucrative professionally. You know, my dad. I remember I could have gone into radio, and I actually tried to get a job at the Washington Post. But then I started thinking, well, why not do television.

You make a lot more money, and you know, if my face didn't stop the clock, maybe I could give it a try. Yeah, you've got this great line in your book, which is I smile big. I smile a lot. Even my resting bitch face is a smile. Yeah that's true. So it's true. I feel so unnatural and looks so weird when I'm not smiling. We'll be right back. So life is good for this young married couple, both building their lives together and then quite literally building a life together.

They have their first child, a daughter, Ellie. I've just gotten my job on the Today Show and I was I think five months pregnant on my first day at

the Today's Show. So that's where I was when Ellie was born, and it was you know, it was a wonderful time because nobody likes a baby like the morning show audience, right where everyone feels infested in your pregnancy and excited and it's you know, it's a big milestone, not only for you and your family, but in a weird way for the audience, you know, where everything is kind of a shared experience on morning television with all these sort of para social relationships that are formed between

viewers and and the people who are on television, even more so now because I never really talked about my kids when I was on the Today Show. I tried only at times when it seemed more natural, like showing a photo of Carrie or Ellie when they were born, or having them come in occasionally if Britney Spears was

performing or something like that. But um, this idea of really really putting your kids out front was just not done back then as much as it is now because of social media and because you know, we live in an oversharing culture, right. So anyway, it was a very exciting time and everyone sort of celebrated Ellie's birth. It was it was wonderful, But I went through a period of time and I wanted to talk about this Danny, because again, I think this is something people are ashamed

of and don't want to admit. I was really afraid of hurting Ellie. I was afraid of dropping her, but also kind of the feeling that you get some people get when they're on a tall balcony and they think, oh, I could just crawl over this railing and jump and end it all, and you're not going to do it, but you're scared that you could. I think some of your listeners will think I'm out of my mind, and

others will say, I know exactly what you mean. And so I think that translated into what if I like Leevelly or I think it's this hyper vigilance you feel as a parent. It's almost a primitive thing as a mother, and it's almost like, gosh, you know, I have so much responsibility. This tiny being depends on me for everything. What if I fall short. I've never really thought of it that way, and the sort of need to be the you know, the good mother or the perfect mother.

So I struggled with that a little bit, but then that went away. But I didn't really have anybody I could talk to you about it. And I wanted other mothers to say, oh, so this is normal. This is sort of a form of postpartum depression, and um, I'm not super weird having these scary thoughts, intrusive thoughts. During this time, Katie is living in a kind of dual landscape. On the one hand, she's more and more in the public eye. On the other hand, she's experiencing the vulnerability

and newness of motherhood. And through the process of inhabiting these two very different spheres, she's getting to know herself in important ways. She enjoys, even embraces her new found fame. But nothing is ever entirely wonderful. It's complicated. We worship our celebrities in this culture, but we also don't see them as quite human somehow, and Katie, Katie is human.

In fact, showing her humanness is her superpower. I think because the Today's show showcased sort of my whole personality and me and my sort of entirety, and it was working. I thought, oh, this is good. You know, I can do serious news, I can have fun I can be funny, I can be compassionate, I can sort of show, the multiple size of me. So I think in a way, because I was getting so much positive feedback, it bolstered

my self confidence. And I think the only dichotomy between my public life because I was very much myself on TV, and I think that's what people responded to, was the strain of having someone sort of just explode like a rocket into the sky and everything that came with it, you know, being on the cover of magazines, you know, just that kind of weird stuff being written about and and and of course at the beginning, it was all very positive, you know, borderline fawning about me because I

was sort of a little bit of a new breed of journalists on TV. I was normal looking, I was approachable, I was very girl next door. I wasn't particularly glamorous or unattainable. I was someone that people could really relate to. And I think probably the private side was some of the things that interfered with a normal life, and that is, you know, being recognized, which is fine at first, and then it just gets almost confusing, and it also creates,

I think, this weird imbalance in a relationship. I was suddenly making so much money more than Jay and I ever envisioned either would be making and that I think can be quite destabilizing for a relationship. And back then, in the early nineties, Danny, a woman making more than her husband, believe it or not, was kind of an anomaly, not so much anymore, but back then, the expectation was that the man would always be the primary breadwinner, at least,

you know, generally make more money than the woman. And so this was different. You know, both of us had mothers that didn't really work, and suddenly I him like bringing home the bacon and not so much the money, but also the attention that that created when we were out in the world. And the way people gravitate to quote unquote, you know, public figures or fame or whatever it is, hoping that that will kind of reflect back

at them. But the way well known people are treated versus people who aren't necessarily in the public eye is pretty extraordinary and pretty fucked up. So you would be, for example, you know, at a party or at a reception, and what would happen if the two of you were out as a couple together. Well, I think too often people would kind of ignore Jay. He was far more intelligent and interesting, far more interesting than I, but they would sort of give him a cursory hello, and then

they would turn back to me. And I think, by the way wives of famous men probably feel this all the time. People feel very diminished and it's gross the way people react. But fame is a very strange thing, and I think it makes people that crazy sometimes and forget their manners. And then of course I would spend my time worried that people were being attentive to Jay, and then that would affect my level of enjoyment wherever

we were. It just made it hard. It's just one of those things that couples have to grapple with both that there's a big financial gap. You know, Jay was doing well, but I was just making like silly money. And I remember wanting to have a career because I never wanted to be dependent on anyone else because the power dynamic automatically changes, you know. I wanted an equal voice in my marriage. I wanted to be able to not be afraid. I didn't want to fear like someone

leaving me and being left high and dry. There's a very good book called The Feminist Mistake by Leslie Bennett's that had a big impact on me and and the importance I think of women to be financially independent. So it created some challenges in our marriage, and I think it made Jay feel less then, which is the last thing in the world I would ever want him to feel. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. Katie and Jay do their best to maintain the balance

in their relationship and family. They have another daughter. Katie's career is skyrocketing. Then Jay becomes ill. He has cancer, and the prognosis is grim. It becomes achingly clear that no matter how much Katie researches Jay's cancer and identifies experts and experimental treatments, he isn't going to survive this. Katie is shocked and devastated by the news of Jay's illness, and it becomes a twofold secret, a secret at home

and a secret on the air. Privately, neither she nor Jay want the news to be true, so they avoid talking about it, as if perhaps talking about it will make it too real and publicly, well, this isn't something she wants to share with the public, and why should she. I felt it was so critically important to protect Jay's privacy. You know, this was a family matter. This was something that was really no one's business. And you know, I shared a lot on the Today's Show, but this wasn't

mine to share. And as you can imagine, to go from thinking you have a healthy husband too, and the span of twenty four hours having a doctor say it's very bleak, he's got colin cancer and it's all over his liver. The prognosis is very bleak. Is is pretty astounding, and you know it was it was something that that

I didn't want to share with the world. I mean, the world ultimately found out during the course of his illness, thanks to you know, find publications like the National Enquirer, but I just you know, it wasn't it wasn't for public consumption. And you know, my close friends obviously knew all about it. People on the show knew all about it and what was happening and what I was going through.

But I wasn't going to be I mean, I became sort of Katie Kurk breathing widow because you know, you can't basically keep a secret it that your husband died, right, But during the course of his illness, it was just nobody's business, and it was jay. It wasn't me. You know, maybe if it's been me, you know, I would have been more public like Robin Roberts was with her cancer. But it wasn't my life and it wasn't my story to tell. I think we all have our public personas

versus our private lives. And in a way, it was a sanctuary to be on national television and to be interviewing people about gosh, who knows what you know, the events of the day, or doing a cooking segment, because it required sort of my complete focus, and it's was the only time of the day where I wasn't thinking and worrying about Jay and trying to come up with a cure for risk cancer and doing research and calling

pharmaceutical companies and universities and Israeli you know, pharmaceutical company, and calling Bird Vogelstein who discovered the Ashkenazi eugene at Johns Hopkins, and just anyone I could find. So for those two hours, it was it was this escape from this nightmare that we found ourselves in, and so it was a relief to put on kind of my happy face and to be this Really I felt like I was an actor. I was taking on this role and

it felt surreal. It didn't feel like my life. And then of course it was what was really happening behind the scenes. We all have this dichotomy between who we present ourselves or how we present ourselves, and what's really going on inside. And I think that was just the extreme case of that, where I was dying inside every single day. But I wanted. I wanted to have some

kind of routine for my kids. I wanted to keep my job because I didn't know what was going to happen with Ja, and I wanted some escape from the relentless anguish of dealing with the terminal illness. Of course, the news does get out, as news tends to do. Katie's with Jay at the hospital at one point and a nurse points to the cover of a tabloid and says, look,

you're in the paper. The headline is Katie's private pain, which is suddenly not so private, And the gossip isn't just happening in magazines, It's happening in their community too, among other families and acquaintances. I think a mother came up to me on the sidewalk near Ellie and Carrie's

school and said, oh, you know, I heard. I heard it's really bad, as if it's been the subject of you know, after school gossip among the mobs, And it just really infuriated me that someone was gossiping about my husband and whether he was going to live or die. It just seems so disgusting to me, And I just remember feeling so infuriated at the idea that that Jay's health was the subject of of their chatter as they were, you know, having coffee in the morning after drop off. Yeah,

there's something sort of like carnivorous about it or something. Yeah, that's a good word. The period of time that that Jay was sick was how long? About nine months? Nine months. During these nine months, the family spends a lot of time together, particularly at their country house, which is a happy place for Jay. At one point, Katie does have to travel for work, though she's off to London to cover the funeral of Princess Diana, a woman she had

met and admired. As Katie is there, reporting on the scene that broke the whole world's heart of the two young boys walking solemnly behind their mother's casket, Katie is stricken. She's having a hard time holding it together. It was miserable. And you know, that was sort of when the professional

and personal worlds collided. When you see the premature death of a young, vibrant woman and her little boys walking behind her casket with I think a little card that said Mummy, I believe, and it just felt too real and it was just extremely hard. Mean, it was so such a sad time for so many people when Princess Diana died, and a sad time for me because I had met her and admired her. But it just reminded me of what I was facing in the not too

distant future. Yeah, and what your girls were going to be facing. Yeah, of course, of course. And you know, whether a death is sudden or a death takes nine months or a few years, you know, with some cancer diagnoses, it's just so painful. And I think the process of seeing someone slip away slowly. And you know, my husband was so young and vibrant and so fun in the life of the party, and such a good athlete, and you know, had been a pilot in the Navy, and

he was just this living, exuberant person. And to see what answer does to a healthy person, it's just it's just devastating. It's devastating for the people who are witnessing it. And of course, as Jay said, having cancer is the loneliest experience in the world because I think, no matter what, nobody really can understand what that feels like. Jay dies

at the age of forty two. Sometime after his death, Katie finds a list he had made of all their combined assets, a very meticulous and organized list about life, insurance, and property and capital improvements. The list, Katie notices, is dated three months before Jay died. He was trying to put his affairs in order. He knew, so did she, but they didn't talk about it. It's one of my great regrets that we didn't say, you know, what are

your wishes, what are your hopes for the girls? How can we make sure you stay present somehow in their lives. Do you want to write them a letter, you want to give them a video message? We never allowed ourselves to go there, you know, which is another reason I named the book going There. It's also about having hard conversations, and the closest we got was when we were in Millbrook one weekend and it was a beautiful day and the girls were splashing around in the pool and you know,

it was just one of those perfect afternoons. And I said, I don't know how I'm gonna be able to come to this house if you're not here. That was the only thing that I had said. And he said, well, I hope it will be full of happy memories. And that was the closest we came to accepting that we weren't going to be able to fix it. And I think, Gosh talk about lack of control and feeling powerless and

wanting to control the world. I thought, she, if I just somehow get to the right doctors or find the right research or clinical trial, I'm going to be able to fix this. And I thought, for some reason TV would ignore me from having something like this happened. I don't know where that magical thinking came from, but you know, I just really wish that we had had more honest conversations that we were just I think we were both

too afraid. He was too afraid to honestly disappoint me and leave me, and I was too afraid to talk to him about the fact that he might not be around and he might not win this battle. And I think a lot of families really wrestle with this um kind of this trying to find a bridge between hope and reality and hope and acceptance. It's really, I think the hardest thing in the world to navigate well, and

there's still a culture of silence around it. Yeah. After Jay's death, Katie endures a series of tragedies and losses, almost like dominoes, one after the other. Katie's father had, unbeknownst to her, been suffering from Parkinson's. In an attempt to protect her, her parents kept us from her because they felt she had all she could handle on her plate. A couple of years later, her sister Emily is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she dies at the age of

fifty four. Her sister in law two dies at age fifty four. The loss is enormous and to the grieving, but Katie perseveres. She goes there, she heals, She takes care of her daughters. She eventually remarries her husband, John, and she continues to have a robust and prolific career. At one point, she has the liberating epiphany that she doesn't need to be forever popular and well liked. She no longer needs to uphold a certain image, No longer

needs to be afraid to have the hard conversations. Grief and loss I think makes you acutely aware that life is fragile and we're all terminal. And I think it makes you appreciate every day a little more. I mean, you still fall into these traps where you take things for granted, and you you're not as grateful as you should be to wake up in the morning and to feel good or feel fine. But I think that I've always been a pretty authentic person and true to myself.

And this idea of of just yearning for approval and yearning for popularity and for people to like me when they don't really even know me um is just foolhardy and feudal. And I think that I have tried to embrace every stage of my life, whether it was in my forties or in my fifties, and now I'm in my sixties, and John really keeps me grounded. Whenever I'll bitch about getting older, he's gonna He'll say, you know, when you're seventy, you're going to say I wish I

was sixty five, So enjoy it while you can. He always says things like, you're never going to get any younger. So you know, I have a great partner who is incredibly supportive and fun and just good company and just

you know, I just love being around. A lot of my life is in my rear view mirror, but I want to continue doing and challenging myself and asking questions and hopefully being of service in any way I can, whether it's through raising money for cancer research or hopefully helping people contextualize the complicated world we're living in, or just giving them some information that will lead to a

deeper understanding. I feel so fortunate. I feel guilty actually that I've been so blessed, and there's so much suffering in the world. So how do you combine enjoying life but also being of service and supporting other people who aren't in the same situation as you. I mean, I think that's kind of the constant battle we all face, and so I'm plagued by those things. But yeah, I'm just trying to really have a life of purpose for

as long as I can. And I'm the kind of person that I don't think I'll ever be able to retire. It's just not in my d n a. I have to feel productive. I think I got that from my mom. Katie starts a new company, Katie Correct Media. She has a newsletter, a podcast, a fantastic presence on Instagram, and

a best selling book. She's nothing if not productive. I'm so excited to learn something new every day, you know, I'm learning about thermonuclear weapons when I'm reading articles about the Russian military and getting a deeper understanding and reminding myself of what happened. Why was it called the Iron Curtain? So like Google is my best friend, I look things up. I just have this insatiable hunger for knowledge, and so if I can share that, that makes me so happy.

And then but also I don't want to be so myopic that I I don't appreciate the people in my life. You know, Chase said him when he was sick. Now, this was at the height of our careers, when we're really focused on our careers and obviously our family. But you know that early forties, right cuts when you really are operating on all four cylinders. I always get that expression wrong, But he said, nothing really matters but your

family and friends. And that was such an important reminder that nobody is going to give a rat's ass when you die right, you're If you're lucky, you'll get a mention in the obituaries, and maybe you'll have to pay for it, right, Who knows. But the things that lead to a rich and fulfilling life are your relationships, so I try to be mindful of that as well. It's a work in progress every day to find the right

balance of what is a meaningful life. But I'm still doing it and still working on it, and you know, still loving every minute. We can never see the future. We have no crystal ball. We just don't know what's coming around the bend. All we can do always is the best with what we have. Here's Katie reading a beautiful passage from her memoir, an Elegy to a time

of innocence. With two little girls and all four of our parents alive and thriving, we were in the happiness bubble, buffer generationally by the people we loved most in the world. Nothing made my heart sing like seeing a young couple pushing a stroller alongside vibrant grandparents. My mom would visit and come with me to pick up Ellie from school. My parents stayed with us in Moriytown and Leader Millbrook. We love double dating with them. Jay's equally fun folks

had a house in Rhogah's Beach. His siblings kids were around the same age as ours, so it was always cousin central when we visited. There's a funny photo of me and Jay's sisters Barbara and Claire, and his brother Chris's wife Cathy, all pregnant at the same time. They had a piano and a fireplace. We bust out the chips and salts and watch old movies like How Green Was My Valley and Mrs Minever. At the time, it didn't occur to me that one day the bubble would burst.

That's what bubbles do. Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly Zukour is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find on Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like to know more about the story

that inspired this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H