Barbara Walters By the Years: Images

A tv icon. Barbara Walters spent six many years as a hard-hitting journalist — interviewing everybody from controversial political leaders to a number of the world’s most high-profile stars — previous to her retirement in 2014.

Walters kicked off her profession within the Nineteen Sixties on the As we speak present, the place she went from working behind the scenes as a producer and author to creating her method in entrance of the digital camera as a well-liked cohost.

Her attain solely expanded within the following decade when she landed a unique cohost place, this time at ABC Night Information — the community that she would name dwelling for the following 5 many years. The Massachusetts native’s tenure on the information program, coupled along with her personal Barbara Walters Particular, gave her entry to (and perception into) public figures starting from President Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro to Lucille Ball and Fred Astaire.

In 1979, Walters landed one other career-defining function because the host of ABC’s 20/20, a place she held till 2004. As the tv anchor continued to guide the business with numerous movie star interviews, her personal fame grew as effectively. Her enduring catchphrase — “I’m Barbara Walters, and that is 20/20” — held up so effectively via the many years that she briefly got here out of retirement as a way to utter the phrases on New Yr’s Eve 2019.

Walters not solely carved out a path for herself throughout her a few years within the tv business, but in addition amplified the voices of her fellow feminine stars with the creation of The View in 1997. After the published journalist based the Emmy-winning daytime discuss present, she cohosted the favored collection for shut to twenty years, sparring and discussing present occasions with numerous iterations of fellow hosts, together with Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg.

In Could 2013, Walters introduced she could be retiring the next 12 months.

“I’ve been fascinated with it for a very long time and that is what I wish to do. … I’m not strolling into the sundown. I don’t wish to seem on one other program,” she instructed viewers on the time. “I would like as a substitute to sit down in a sunny area and admire the gifted girls and OK, some males, too, who can be taking my place. I’ve had a tremendous profession past something I might ever have imagined.”

Preserve scrolling to see Walters’ most memorable moments — together with her a number of marriages and her unbelievable profession success — via the years: