Connie Chung is a Chinese-American journalist and news anchor. It’s possible you noticed her in the 60th anniversary of the Miss Universe pageant. Nope, she wasn’t one of the contestants. She was one of the seven telecast judges of the 2011 Miss Universe.
If not, then you know her from either the NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN or MSNBC. She’s literally been all over the U.S television news networks.
True, Connie Chung is famed for being the first to interview basketball legend of the Los Angeles Lakers, Earvin “Magic” Johnson after he announced to the public that he’s HIV positive. But then, she also got a lot of attention for landing an exclusive interview with U.S. Representative Gary Condit over the disappearance of Chandra Levy; an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons who disappeared in May 2001.
The American journalist has been severally honored for her contributions to the field. She’s received three Emmy awards, has been esteemed with the George Foster Peabody Award and has bagged the Amnesty International Human Rights Award. Disregarding those, Connie Chung has received a handful of accolades for an investigative report she did on a 1966 civil-rights incident. It is said that her report led to the indictment, trial, and conviction of a murderer three decades later.
Sometime in 2013, Chung was nominated for induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame for General Services. Three years later, she got inducted into the 2016 New Jersey Hall of Fame in the Arts and Letters category.
Sometime In 1993, history documented that Chung is the first Asian and second woman to anchor one of America’s major network newscasts. She was the first woman to co-anchor the “CBS Evening News”.
Connie Chung Wiki/Bio
Connie Chung was born as Constance Yu-Hwa Chung Povich on the 20th day of August 1946. As the last child of her parent’s 10 children, Chung was birthed some months after her family immigrated to the U.S. She was born and brought up in Washington D.C.
We gathered that Chung’s father, William Ling Chung worked as an intelligence officer in the Chinese Nationalist Government. He lost five of his kids to war and immigrated with the remaining 5 to America in 1945.
For high school, Chung attended the Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. When she graduated from the school, she moved on to the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1969, Chung gained a degree in journalism from the institution.
It’s on record that Chung was a Harvard fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center of J.F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She has served in a number of top positions related to journalism at the University of Maryland and other prominent institutions of learning.
Connie Chung prefers describing herself as Chinese instead of Chinese-American. She once acknowledged that she’s American but explained that she doesn’t consider herself as half American and half Chinese as both of her parents are from China.
Connie Chung Career/Salary/Net Worth
Connie has traced her decision to become a journalist to 1969 when she decided to major in television journalism in college after an internship where she watched reporters do their stuff.
Nevertheless, her journalism career started with her being employed as a secretary at Washington’s WTTG-TV. She eventually became a reporter and worked for various American television news networks.
Despite the awards Connie Chung has received throughout her journalism career, she is regarded as one of the most criticized journalists due to her interview with Kathleen Gingrich, the mother of a Republican politician, Newt Gingrich.
In a nutshell, Chung was excessively grilled and crucified for luring Kathleen into saying her son thinks the then First Lady, Hillary Clinton is a bitch.
Connie Chung Net Worth
Over the years, a handful of different figures have been quoted as Connie Chung’s Net worth. While some estimated that her net worth is as much as $45 million, others stated that it is lesser than half of that amount – $15million.
The different figures quoted as Connie Chung’s net worth has made it difficult to authenticate any of those figures. Nevertheless, Wikiace can confirm that Chung earned up to $2 million a year when she was with CNN. This came to light when the Cable News Network announced that it’s pulling plugs on it’s “Connie Chung Tonight” program.
Connie Chung Husband/Divorce/Children
Connie Chung has never gone through a divorce. She married her talk show host husband, Maury Povich in 1984 when she was 38.
Chung is Povich’s second wife. He was married to Phyllis Minkoff for 17 years and they had two daughters – Susan and Amy.
Chung and Povich reportedly met when she was with WTTG-TV. While working at the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, Povich co-anchored the news with Connie Chung. After Povich parted with his first wife, Chung dated him for almost seven years. When they eventually got married, Povich was reluctant about making babies with Chung as he’s already a father to two daughters.
But then, Chung wanted a child of her own and Povich wanted to keep her happy so, they adopted a son, Matthew Jay Povich in 1995. That was after she tried in-vitro fertilization.
There was a time Chung was speaking about her career and marriage to Povich. She said:
“I was just going at this career – boom, boom, boom! Then all of a sudden, at 38, Oh, my God – I forgot to get married!”
In 2007, Chung and Povich launched a newspaper called the “Flathead-Beacon” in Flathead Valley, Montana, where they call home.
