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Cokie Roberts

RIP

Legendary Journalist Cokie Roberts Dies At 75

She passed on September 17 due to complications from breast cancer.

Cokie Roberts

Credit: AP/Shutterstock

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Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts has died at the age of 75. She helped shape NPR in the 1970s and 1980s before joining ABC News in 1988.

She died on Tuesday, September 17, from complications from breast cancer, according to a family statement obtained by NPR

Cokie was born in 1943 in Louisiana. Both of her parents, Lindy and Hale Boggs, represented Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her mother won a special election for her father’s seat after he died in a plane crash in Alaska. Cokie grew up in and around Congress, splitting her time between Washington and Louisiana as a child. Her parents’ careers inspired her to become a political journalist.

Cokie attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Her first job was at WRC-TV in Washington, where she hosted a show called Meeting of Minds. After she married husband Steven V. Roberts, the couple moved to Athens, Greece, where she worked as a freelance journalist while he wrote for the New York Times.