Gretchen Carlson facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gretchen Carlson
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Carlson in 2017
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| Born |
Gretchen Elizabeth Carlson
June 21, 1966 Coon Rapids, Minnesota, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 1989–present |
| Organization | Lift Our Voices |
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Notable credit(s)
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The Saturday Early Show co-host (2002–2005) Fox and Friends co-host (2005–2013) |
| Television | CBS News (2000–2005) Fox News (2005–2016) |
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| Spouse(s) |
Casey Close
(m. 1997) |
| Children | 2 |
Gretchen Elizabeth Carlson (born June 21, 1966) is an American broadcast journalist, writer, and television personality.
Carlson was born and raised in Minnesota. A talented youth violinist, Carlson competed in a number of music contests before becoming a beauty pageant contestant. After winning Miss Minnesota in 1988, Carlson became Miss America for 1989. She attended Stanford University and graduated in 1990. Carlson became a television anchor, working for several local TV stations in Virginia, Ohio and Texas before becoming a national correspondent and anchor on CBS. She hosted the Saturday edition of The Early Show on CBS News from 2002 to 2005. Carlson subsequently moved to Fox News's morning show Fox & Friends, from 2005 to 2013, and The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News from 2013 to 2016.
Carlson also served as chairwoman of the board of directors of the Miss America Organization from 2018 to 2019. Carlson was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People In The World in 2017. She has written two books, her memoir, Getting Real, and the New York Times bestseller Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back.
Contents
Early life and education
Carlson was born in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, the daughter of Karen Barbara (née Hyllengren) and Lee Roy Carlson, one of four children. Her father studied business at Gustavus Adolphus College and later became owner/operator of Main Motor Sales, an automobile dealership started by her grandfather in 1919. Carlson, whose grandfather was a minister, is of Swedish descent through both parents. One of her childhood babysitters was Michele Bachmann, the future Republican congresswoman who ran for president.
Carlson's hometown of Anoka, Minnesota, calls itself the "Halloween Capital of the World" and hosts the state's second largest parade, of which Carlson served as grand marshal in 2004.
In her youth, Carlson was a violinist who performed on radio and television. She studied with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and with Mary West of the MacPhail Center For Music in Minneapolis. Carlson performed in several competitions, such as the Stulberg International String Competition, where she was a finalist in 1982, the American String Teachers Association, where she won second place in 1981 to Joshua Bell, who became a world famous concert violinist, and the Friends of Minnesota Orchestra, where she won in 1979, performing as a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra as a prize at just thirteen years old. She attended Aspen Music Festival from 1976 to 1983, and was a member of the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony from 1980 to 1984. Carlson graduated from Anoka-Hennepin School District 11's Anoka High School, where she was the 1984 valedictorian.
Carlson was crowned Miss Minnesota in June 1988 and became Miss America 1989 on September 10, 1988. She was the first classical violinist to win those titles. Following Carlson's Miss America win, she was invited to meet President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. She made many television appearances during her year of service, including appearing on The David Letterman Show, where he jokingly asked her out on a date. After Carlson's appearance as a newscaster in a sketch on Bloopers and Practical Jokes with Ed McMahon and Dick Clark, television agents began calling, eventually launching her career in broadcast television.
Carlson graduated from Stanford University in 1990 with honors, where she studied organizational behavior. She spent a study-abroad period at Oxford University, studying the works of Virginia Woolf. She was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Carlson planned to attend law school after Stanford and completed the LSAT exam, but instead focused on a career in broadcast journalism.
In September 2011, Carlson was named to the inaugural class of the Anoka High School Hall of Fame.
Career
Early career and CBS News
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A year after becoming Miss America in 1989, Carlson secured a role on WRIC-TV, an ABC-affiliated television station serving Richmond, Virginia as a co-anchor on the network and political commentator. Style Weekly deemed it a coup for WRIC-TV at the time. In 1992, she joined WCPO-TV, serving Cincinnati, Ohio as a media commentator and remained at the station for a period of two years. She later worked at WOIO/WUAB in Cleveland, Ohio, where Carlson and her colleague Denise Dufala, became the first women to co-anchor a primetime major-market newscast.
Following her time in Cleveland, Carlson served as a weekend anchor and reporter for KXAS-TV in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, from 1998 to 2000.
In both Dallas and Cleveland, Carlson performed her own rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the violin for Major League Baseball games.
Carlson moved to the national television scene as a national correspondent in 2000 and in 2002, she became the co-anchor of the Saturday edition of The Early Show on CBS along with Russ Mitchell. Carlson frequently anchored the weekend edition of the CBS Evening News during her time at the network.
There were several cultural moments that Carlson reported on in her early career as a reporter including the Oklahoma City bombing and the O. J. Simpson murder case while at WOIO in Cleveland, and the Timothy McVeigh execution, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and various G7 Summit meetings while at CBS News.
Fox News
Carlson first appeared on Fox & Friends as a weekend substitute host in 2006. On September 25, 2006, after a shifting of anchors, which included E.D. Hill moving to the 10 a.m. hour of Fox News Live, Carlson became the anchor of Fox & Friends. She co-hosted with Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade for almost 8 years. In 2012, she walked off the set of Fox & Friends when on-air colleagues made offensive comment about women in the workplace. In 2013, Carlson admitted on Brian Kilmeade's radio show that Fox News female anchors were not allowed to wear pants. Despite dress code restrictions, Carlson was known for doing push-ups when military personnel were guests on the show. Carlson returned to Fox and Friends in 2014 during a Cooking With Friends segment with her children and again in 2015 to promote her memoir Getting Real.
Carlson left Fox & Friends in September 2013 to anchor a one-hour daytime program, The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson, beginning in the fall of 2013, taking part of the slot opened by Megyn Kelly's move to primetime. She began covering stories that supported women's rights, including a piece on Robin Wright of the Netflix series House of Cards demanding the same salary as Kevin Spacey. Just three weeks before she was fired, she came forward in support of the assault weapons ban.
2016–present
Miss America Organization
On January 1, 2018, Carlson was elected chairwoman of the board of directors of the Miss America Organization, a volunteer position. Shortly after joining as chairwoman, Carlson's first major decision was to remove the swimsuit competition from the pageant, following a unanimous vote from the board of directors. Carlson's goals were to transition the pageant into "Miss America 2.0", where the swimsuit competitions would be replaced with on-stage interviews.
Following internal backlash, Carlson resigned from Chairwoman of the Board in June 2019. Around the same time, it was announced that the Miss America brand would return to NBC.
Other television and media
In April 2018, Carlson reached a first-look development deal with A&E Networks, under which she would host three documentary specials across its channels, such as Lifetime.
In May 2018, Carlson was a correspondent on an episode of the television documentary series America Divided, which airs on Epix.
Carlson also hosted Live PD Presents: Women on Patrol and Escaping Polygamy on Lifetime in 2018. In August 2019, it was announced that Carlson would host two hourlong documentaries from the "Beyond the Headlines" franchise. The first called Escaping the NXIVM Cult: A Mother's Fight to Save Her Daughter, and the second The College Admissions Scandal.
In December 2019, Carlson wrote an opinion article in The New York Times, stating that she still cannot disclose what happened to her due to a nondisclosure agreement, but that it was her desire to be able to do so. In January 2020, Carlson announced a new television deal with Blumhouse Productions to produce a new interview style series. In October 2020, it was announced that Carlson would join PEOPLE (the TV Show!) as a special contributor.
In April 2021, Carlson and her life story was featured on the PBS television program Finding Your Roots in order to explore her family genealogy. It was shown through investigative and DNA research that she is a full-blooded Scandinavian-American, and that much of her family originated in Småland, Sweden.
Personal life
On October 4, 1997, Carlson married sports agent Casey Close. They live in Greenwich, Connecticut, with their two children.
She announced on Fox & Friends on June 9, 2009, and repeated on Glenn Beck's Fox News program, that her parents' car dealership had been selected for closure as part of the General Motors reorganization and bankruptcy. A year later, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that "It took an act of Congress, a national TV appeal and maybe a little bit of history on the owners' side, but Main Motor, the Anoka car dealership that Lee and Karen Carlson's family has owned for 91 years, will keep its General Motors dealership after all."
Carlson remains an advocate of the arts from her experience as a child violinist. As a string instrumentalist in her youth, Carlson had admired cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whom she eventually met when they both spoke at the 2019 Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco.
See also
In Spanish: Gretchen Carlson para niños
