American television journalist who has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for “CBS’s 60 Minutes.” She is known for her news and television investigations and award-winning foreign reporting. For her body of work she has earned various journalism awards including a Lifetime Achievement News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2003 for overall excellence in reporting.
At “60 Minutes” she replaced Harry Reasoner and joined fellow correspondents Don Hewitt, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, and Steve Kroft. She has held several positions at CBS News, including White House Correspondent, moderator of “Face the Nation,” and co-anchor, with Charles Kuralt, of “America Tonight” since October 1990. A financial success in her field, she makes over a million dollars a year and prefers political stories.
Ambitious, hardworking, and hard-nosed, she worked her way up to political campaign coverage and eventually to coverage of the White House. In her 19-year climb at CBS from White House reporter to evening-news anchor to “60 Minutes” correspondent, Stahl met obstacles by going over, through or around them. Her colleague Steve Croft says admiringly “Leslie’s a bulldog. She’s survived in a business that is tough on women by her hard work and tenacity.”
Her autobiography, “Reporting Live” (1999), looks back at 30 years of proud moments. Her will to have both a career and be a mother was enormous. Though Stahl, who is married to writer Aaron Latham, rarely missed any of her daughter’s dance recitals or school plays, she nonetheless paid a price for her ambitions. She cultivated an ulcer, which has since been cured through medication and diet.
The daughter of a paint salesman who died in 1994, a housewife mom and one brother, Stahl had a normal, healthy childhood in Swampscott, Massachusetts. She was a good student and cheerleader who majored in history at Wheaton College. After a year in graduate school, she was hired at NBC as a writer and researcher. When she asked David Brinkley whether she should take a producer job in London, he told her that she, as a pretty blonde, should stay in New York and have fun. She thought, “I’ll show him.”
In 1972 she took a job as a reporter with CBS in Washington, where she wore her glasses in order to look serious. It was during that period that she developed her attack-dog reputation: once she followed John Dean into a men’s room while asking him questions.
In 1977 she married handsome young magazine writer Aaron Latham one afternoon before heading to the studio for her evening broadcast. Latham is best known today for his book “Urban Cowboy,” which was made into a film. They have one daughter.
Link to Wikipedia biography