Born Into Power, Built Her Own
Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs — Cokie Roberts to the world — was born in New Orleans on December 27, 1943, into the most prominent political family in Louisiana. Her father was Hale Boggs, the powerful U.S. Representative who served as House Majority Leader before disappearing in a plane crash in Alaska in 1972. Her mother was Lindy Boggs, who won Hale's congressional seat and served for eighteen years before becoming U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Politics wasn't just the family business. It was the family oxygen.
The Journalist
Cokie Roberts didn't go into politics. She went into journalism, which — given her family's position — was either the most natural choice in the world or the most contrarian. She started at NPR in 1978, covering Congress with a depth of understanding that came from having grown up in the Capitol. She knew how legislation actually got made, not from textbooks but from dinner table conversations. She understood the human relationships behind the political positions, the deals struck in hallways, the personal loyalties that shaped public policy.
At NPR, Roberts became a star — one of the founding voices of the network's political coverage, alongside Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer. She was clear, authoritative, and unflappable, with a voice that conveyed both intelligence and warmth. When she moved to ABC News in 1988, she brought the same qualities to television, becoming a regular on "This Week" and a political analyst whose commentary was trusted by viewers across the political spectrum.
The New Orleans Roots
Roberts grew up in a household that was New Orleans to its core — Catholic, Democratic, connected to every power structure in the city and the state. The Boggs family was part of the fabric of the city's political establishment, and Cokie absorbed the lessons of that world early: how to listen, how to build relationships, how to understand that politics is ultimately about people.
She attended Sacred Heart Academy in New Orleans before heading to Wellesley College, and the combination of New Orleans warmth and Northeastern rigor defined her career. She could talk to a Senate committee chairman and a cab driver with equal ease, shifting registers without losing authenticity — a skill that New Orleans teaches better than any finishing school.
The Books
In addition to her journalism career, Roberts wrote several bestselling books about women in American history — "We Are Our Mothers' Daughters," "Founding Mothers," and "Ladies of Liberty" — that brought the stories of women who shaped the nation into the popular conversation. The books reflected her New Orleans sensibility: history told through people, through relationships, through the domestic and personal details that traditional historians often overlooked.
Legacy
Cokie Roberts died on September 17, 2019, at 75. NPR, ABC, and the entire Washington press corps mourned her as one of the great journalists of her generation. But she was also mourned in New Orleans, where the Boggs family name is on buildings and bridges and where Cokie remained a source of deep civic pride — the New Orleans girl who went to Washington and became the most trusted voice in American political journalism.
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