Barbara Walters, the trailblazing television news broadcaster and longtime ABC News anchor and correspondent who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men, has died. She was 93.
Walters joined ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of 20/20, and in 1997, she launched The View.
In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.
She made her final appearance as a co-host of The View in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, to Dena and Louis "Lou" Walters. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in the 1950s, Walters found work as a publicist and television writer before landing a spot as a writer on NBC's Today show in 1961. She would become the program's first female co-host in 1974, and won her first Emmy award the following year for Outstanding Talk Show Host.