MATRIX SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT: GAYLE KING

Co-Host, CBS This Morning

Gayle King will be presenting Norah O’Donnell at the 2019 Matrix Awards.

Gayle King is co-host of CBS THIS MORNING. An experienced television journalist, King interviews top newsmakers and delivers original reporting to CBS THIS MORNING and all CBS News broadcasts and platforms. She is also editor-at-large of the award-winning O, the Oprah Magazine.

CBS THIS MORNING is CBS’ most successful morning news broadcast in more than three decades. Since joining CBS News in 2011, King has conducted revealing and news-making interviews with world leaders, political figures and celebrities.

Recently, King has landed a string of high-profile and competitive interviews.  She sat down with R& B singer R.  Kelly for an explosive and exclusive interview and a separate interview with Azriel Clary and Joycelyn Savage, the two young women living with him in Chicago. The interviews were made into a CBS primetime special which was that evening’s number one program in the timeslot.   The week prior to that, King had the exclusive interviews with the director of the Michael Jackson documentary “Leaving Neverland,” as well as the accusers and members of the Jackson’s family.  King also had the first and only television interview with embattled Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam following his yearbook scandal. She had the first interviews with the two women who allege Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted them. And, following his announcement that he would run for president, King landed the only national TV interview with former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke.

In May, King co-anchored CBS News coverage of the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Additional notable interviews by King include Michelle Obama and her mother, Marian Robinson, in their first TV interview together, former President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Tina Turner, Cher, Taylor Swift, Dave Chappelle, Amy Schumer, Elizabeth Smart, Dylan Farrow, Elon Musk, and the first interview with Starbucks’ executive chairman Howard Schultz following the controversial arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks.

King has handled a number of high-profile assignments, including leading CBS THIS MORNING’S on-the-ground coverage from the Texas border to report on the administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. She co-anchored live broadcasts from Orlando following the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. prior to the museum’s opening, as well as broadcasts from Cleveland and Philadelphia for the 2016 Republican and Democratic Conventions.

King also contributed to CBS News’ Election Night coverage in 2014, 2016 and 2018. She also reported from Newtown, Conn. in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 and co-anchored CBS News’ special coverage of several breaking news stories, including the Paris terrorist attacks, the San Bernardino shootings, and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

King previously hosted “The Gayle King Show,” a live, weekday television interview program on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. The program, which featured a discussion of a broad variety of topics that included politics and cultural developments, was also broadcast on XM Satellite Radio, where it premiered in 2006.

Before that, King worked for 18 years as a television news anchor for CBS affiliate WFSB-TV in Hartford, Conn., during which period, she also hosted her own syndicated daytime program. Prior to joining WFSB, King worked at several other television stations, including WDAF-TV in Kansas City, Mo., WJZ-TV in Baltimore, Md., and WTOP-TV in Washington, D.C.

King has received numerous awards for her extensive work as a journalist, including three Emmys. She was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2017 she was a Variety Power of Women honoree and in 2010 honored with both the Individual Achievement Award for Host-Entertainment/Information and the New York Women in Communications’ Matrix Award recipient. She was honored with an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award as part of CBS News’ division-wide coverage of the Newtown tragedy. King was honored in 2008 with the American Women in Radio & Television Gracie Award for Outstanding Radio Talk Show.

King spent several years of her childhood in Ankara, Turkey, before returning with her family to the United States. She graduated from the University of Maryland in with a degree in psychology.

The mother of a daughter, Kirby, and a son, Will, she currently resides in New York City.

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