Barbara Walters’s career ambitions kept her from true love, writes Susan Page in the upcoming biography, “The Rule Breaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters” (April 23, Simon & Schuster).
The legendary newswoman was married three times — and never to the love of her life.
That was Edward William Brooke III, a liberal Republican who was the first black man elected to the Senate after Reconstruction.
It was “the most serious affair of Barbara’s life,” writes Page.
Their first date was in the Senate Dining Room in 1973.
Walters was still technically married to her second husband, Lee Guber, although the two were unofficially separated. Brooke had just celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary with his wife, Remigia Ferrari-Scacco, with whom he shared two daughters.
With such complications, the pair kept their relationship a secret. “He was not only a married man but also a black man,” writes Page.
The two would meet at the homes of trusted friends and, if they were both in New York or Washington, deliberately accept invitations to the same parties.
“I was excited, fascinated, intrigued, and infatuated,” Page quotes Walters as having said. “[He was] the most attractive, sexiest, funniest, charming and impossible man.”
The relationship got serious. Brooke introduced Walters to his mother, they spent a Thanksgiving together and then Brooke asked his wife for a divorce.
But Walters got cold feet.
Powerful friends advised her that going public with Brooke would destroy her career and it was a chance she wasn’t willing to take.
Brooke eventually got divorced in 1979 and remarried a much younger woman. He never acknowledged the affair but Walters confirmed it in her 2007 memoir, “Audition.” He was the beginning of a chapter titled “Special Men in My Life.”
Walters’ first marriage was to a businessman named Robert Henry Katz.
She had called off what she referred to as their “rather dreary engagement” but changed her mind. They married in 1955, when she was 25, in a swanky ceremony at the Plaza Hotel.
After three years they agreed to get a quickie divorce in Alabama. For years, Walters wouldn’t even acknowledge her first brief marriage.
“She never talked about it,” Bill Geddie, a producer on “The View,” told Page. “When you said, ‘How many times were you married?’ She always said, ‘two.’ I said, ‘But what about …’ She was reply, ‘No, that doesn’t count.'”
But apparently, there were no hard feelings.
Many years later Walters was entering a New York City apartment building when she spied someone who looked vaguely familiar.
In her memoir, the “20/20” alum remembered saying hello to each other and then commenting to her escort afterward: “That was my first husband!”
After her initial marriage, Walters embarked on an affair with Claudius Charles Phillippe, a shady businessman 18 years her senior.
They spent weekends together at his country home.
“Phillippe, older and more experienced than the men I had known, was a great lover, tender and passionate,” Walters wrote in her memoir. “I grew up sexually.”
She said that she fell in love but Phillippe was still married to his second wife and dragged his feet on getting a divorce. The two eventually split.
In 1962, Walters met theatrical producer Lee Guber on a blind date. They were engaged a year later.
However, as with her first marriage, Walters called off the engagement only to change her mind.
Days after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Guber appeared at Walters’ apartment door telling her, “Life is short, let’s get married right now.”
She and Guber married that December.
It didn’t get off to a good start as during the honeymoon Walters recalled feeling “trapped and restless.” They lived in separate apartments for the first six months of their marriage.
There was also friction over Walters’ desire to have a child, which wasn’t as much of a priority for Guber who had a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
The couple eventually adopted a little girl they named Jacqueline.
By the early 70s, the marriage was on the rocks.
Guber’s career was on a downslide while hers was on the rise. Walters was often away traveling and Guber complained about only having a wife “one day a month.”
He told friends he was lonely and was rumored to have a mistress. Walters was also unhappy.
They agreed to separate in 1972 after nine years of marriage. Daughter Jacqueline was 3-years-old.
“The View” co-creator had a healthy dating life following her divorce.
She had a “casual romance with John Diebold, a pioneering business executive and a more serious one with Alan Greenspan,” writes Page.
“At the same time she was also seeing Alan ‘Ace’ Greenberg, an executive at The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc., who would become chairman and CEO of the investment bank.”
Dating two Alans led to some confusion at her apartment when one of the Alans called.
“Barbara would ask if ‘Alan’ had spoken almost in a whisper (that would be Greenspan) or in a louder, jovial way (that would be Greenberg),” writes Page.
She also dated Senator John Warner who would go on to marry Elizabeth Taylor.
Her third marriage was to TV producer Merv Adelson. The two were set up on a blind date in 1984, according to Page. (Over the years, some have reported that the two were actually married from 1981 to 1984, divorced and married again.)
The pair were married in 1986 and just like her two previous unions, Walters had misgivings days before the ceremony.
The pair tried to split their time between New York and California to suit their respective professions, but it didn’t work.
An ABC news exec told Page that Walters “was at a point in her life where she wasn’t going to give it up — that is, to dial down her career — and he was at a point in his life where he wanted more. He ultimately wanted a wife.”
Before their fifth anniversary, Adelson was photographed with a younger lawyer named Thea Nesis. She would become his fourth wife.
The split was “particularly painful and embarrassingly public,” Page writes. “The other woman exposed Barbara’s insecurities about her age, her looks, her ability to love and be loved.”
A colleague says it was one of the few times they had ever seen Walters cry.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vcGFnZXNpeC5jb20vMjAyNC8wNC8xNS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L2JhcmJhcmEtd2FsdGVyc3MtY2FyZWVyLWFtYml0aW9ucy1rZXB0LWhlci1mcm9tLXRydWUtbG92ZS_SAWtodHRwczovL3BhZ2VzaXguY29tLzIwMjQvMDQvMTUvZW50ZXJ0YWlubWVudC9iYXJiYXJhLXdhbHRlcnNzLWNhcmVlci1hbWJpdGlvbnMta2VwdC1oZXItZnJvbS10cnVlLWxvdmUvYW1wLw?oc=5
2024-04-15 19:24:00Z
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