Cokie Roberts - Background

Background

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs was born on December 27, 1943 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received the sobriquet "Cokie" from her brother Tommy, who could not pronounce "Corinne". Cokie Roberts is the third child and youngest daughter of former ambassador and long-time Democratic Congresswoman from Louisiana Lindy Boggs and of the late Hale Boggs, also a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana who was Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. Her sister, the late Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton, New Jersey and a candidate for U.S. Senate from New Jersey. Her brother Tommy Boggs is a prominent Washington, D.C. attorney and lobbyist.

Roberts attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls school in New Orleans, before graduating from the Stone Ridge School, an all-girls school outside Washington, D.C. in 1960 and then Wellesley College in 1964 where she received a BA in Political Science. She has been married to Steven V. Roberts, a professor and fellow journalist, since 1966, whom she met in the summer of 1962, when she was 18 and he was 19. They currently reside in Bethesda, Maryland. She and her husband have two children, and six grandchildren. Her daughter, Rebecca Roberts, is also a journalist and was one of the hosts of POTUS '08 on XM Radio, which offered live daily coverage of the 2008 presidential election.