Never destroy it.” (It was discovered in his study by a horrified great-granddaughter.) Then there is Couric’s first husband, Jay Monahan, whose bugle-blowing passion for Confederacy re-enactments Couric once saw as “a benign hobby” — throwing him an Old South-themed 40th birthday bash complete with a Scarlett O’Hara Barbie doll atop the cake — but now finds queasy-making, even as she continues to mourn his death from colon cancer at 42?
Soon after our heroine, modeling herself after the fictional Mary Richards, burst into the business as a 22-year-old assistant, a midlife Sam Donaldson leapt atop a desk to serenade her with a World War I song (“K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy”).
Like Richards, Couric turned the world on with her smile and clearly benefited from the not-always-appropriate attentions of powerful men.
While she was a young associate producer for “Take Two,” a daytime program at CNN — then nicknamed Chicken Noodle News — Couric unblinkingly dated a director and swiped on Frosty Cola lipstick to flirt with the playwright Neil Simon at a news conference.Hearing salacious rumors about Lauer and a production assistant, Couric wrinkled her nose at the affront to Lauer’s then-wife rather than the big “duh” of workplace harassment.He was ousted five years later and eventually became, Couric writes “the Leon Trotsky of 30 Rock,” their awkward texts trailing off: “It was as if Matt never existed.”.