Jane Pauley

Pauley married cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the creator of the comic strip Doonesbury, on June 14, 1980. The couple has three children: twins Ross and Rachel, born in 1983, and a son, Thomas, born in 1986. They also have two grandchildren and maintain a residence in the Thimble Islands of Branford, Connecticut.

In 2000, at the age of 50, Pauley was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The condition developed after she received corticosteroid treatments for chronic hives. She chose to speak openly about her diagnosis, sharing her experience in her 2004 memoir Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue to help eliminate social stigmas surrounding mental illness. Beyond her writing, she has served on the board of directors for the Children's Health Fund and The Mind Trust, and in 2009 she lent her name to the Jane Pauley Community Health Center, a network providing comprehensive medical, dental, and behavioral health services across Indiana.

Pauley grew up on the east side of Indianapolis and graduated from Warren Central High School, where she was a champion speech and debate competitor and was elected governor of Indiana Girls State. She attended Indiana University Bloomington, majoring in political science and graduating in 1972. While in college, she was active in local Democratic politics and joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, performing with its musical group, the Kappa Pickers.

Her broadcasting career began in 1972 at Indianapolis CBS affiliate WISH-TV, where news director Lee Giles hired her for an entry-level reporting position at $125 per week despite her lack of formal journalism training. She quickly advanced to fill-in co-anchor. In 1975, NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV in Chicago hired her to co-anchor its major evening newscast alongside Floyd Kalber, making her the first woman to co-anchor an evening broadcast in Chicago. Barely ten months into her role in Chicago, NBC selected her to audition as a replacement for Barbara Walters on the network's national morning show.

Pauley made her national debut on Today in October 1976, co-hosting alongside Tom Brokaw until December 1981 and with Bryant Gumbel starting in January 1982. During her 13-year run on the morning program, she traveled extensively to cover global events, including the 1981 royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer and reports from the Great Wall of China. From 1980 to 1982, she also anchored the Sunday edition of NBC Nightly News.

In 1989, NBC added news reader Deborah Norville to the Today broadcast in an expanded role, prompting widespread media speculation that the network was pushing Pauley out in favor of a younger anchor. In response to the shifting dynamic, Pauley chose to step down from the program in December 1989. Her departure triggered substantial public backlash against NBC and a steep drop in morning ratings for the network. Viewers sent thousands of supportive letters, and national publications highlighted her exit, with New York Magazine dubbing her 'The Loved One.'

Following her departure from Today, Pauley hosted a successful 1990 primetime special titled Changes: Conversations with Jane Pauley, which led to the summer and Sunday night newsmagazine series Real Life with Jane Pauley in 1990 and 1991.

In March 1992, NBC launched the primetime newsmagazine Dateline NBC, pairing Pauley with co-anchor Stone Phillips. The broadcast grew into a central franchise for the network, airing several nights a week during its peak. During her tenure, she also anchored Time and Again on MSNBC, a program that revisited historical news events using NBC News archival material. In 2003, Pauley elected not to renew her expiring contract, departing NBC News after 27 years.

Pauley returned to television in the fall of 2004 as host of The Jane Pauley Show, a syndicated daytime talk program distributed by NBC Universal. Although the show was canceled after a single season due to low ratings, she described the experience as one of the proudest periods of her career for the courage it took to attempt something new. She returned to Today from 2009 to 2013 to host 'Your Life Calling,' a weekly segment sponsored by AARP that profiled older adults pursuing new paths, which served as the foundation for her 2014 book Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life.

In 2014, Pauley appeared as an interview subject on CBS Sunday Morning, generating strong positive viewer reactions that led the network to hire her as a contributor and substitute host. She also made guest appearances hosting CBS This Morning and filling in on the CBS Evening News.

In September 2016, CBS News announced that Pauley would succeed retiring veteran anchor Charles Osgood as the permanent host of CBS Sunday Morning. Her debut as host in October 2016 occurred almost exactly forty years after her initial debut on Today. In taking the anchor chair, she became the only female lead host of a Sunday morning network news broadcast.