Laura Ingraham

Ingraham was raised attending a Baptist church until the age of twelve and later converted to Roman Catholicism. In April 2005, she announced on her radio program that she was undergoing surgery and treatment for breast cancer, subsequently referring to herself as a cancer thriver.

She is a single mother of three adopted children. In 2008, she adopted her daughter, Maria Caroline, from Guatemala. She later expanded her family by adopting two sons from Russia: Michael Dmitri in 2009 and Nikolai Peter in 2011. Ingraham has previously dated conservative commentators Dinesh D'Souza and George Conway.

Ingraham grew up in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughter of Anne Caroline Kozak and James Frederick Ingraham III. She attended Glastonbury High School, graduating in 1981, before enrolling at Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, she studied English literature and Russian, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985. During her senior year, she served as the first female editor-in-chief of the independent conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review.

Following college, Ingraham worked in Washington, D.C., as a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan's domestic policy advisor and later wrote speeches for the Secretary of Transportation. She then entered the University of Virginia School of Law, where she served as a notes editor for the Virginia Law Review and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1991.

Ingraham began her legal career as a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1991 to 1992. From 1992 to 1993, she served as a Supreme Court clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. She subsequently worked as an attorney specializing in white-collar defense at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York City from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, alongside Jay P. Lefkowitz, she organized the Dark Ages Weekend conference as a conservative alternative to the Renaissance Weekend.

Ingraham transitioned into broadcast media in the mid-1990s, appearing as a commentator on MSNBC in 1996 and hosting the MSNBC program Watch It! in the late 1990s, while also contributing commentary to CBS. In April 2001, she launched The Laura Ingraham Show, a nationally syndicated talk radio program. Originally distributed by Westwood One and later Talk Radio Network and Courtside Entertainment Group, the program reached more than 300 stations and millions of weekly listeners before ending its radio run in December 2018 to transition into a podcast format on PodcastOne.

In October 2017, Ingraham returned to full-time television hosting with the launch of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel. The weeknight primetime program quickly gained strong viewership, establishing her among the most-watched female hosts in cable news. Outside broadcasting, Ingraham co-founded the conservative news and lifestyle website LifeZette in 2015 with businessman Peter Anthony, later selling a majority interest in the outlet to The Katz Group in 2018.

Ingraham is the author of several political books, including The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places (2000), Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN Are Subverting America (2003), and the number one New York Times bestseller Power to the People (2007).

An outspoken conservative voice, Ingraham emerged as an early and prominent supporter of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election cycle, delivering an address at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Her commentary across radio and television has frequently generated wide public debate on issues ranging from immigration and judicial appointments to media culture and sports politics.