Dan Rather

Rather was married to Jean Goebel from April 1957 until her death in November 2024. The couple maintained residences in New York City and Austin, Texas, and raised two children: a daughter, Robin, who works as an environmentalist and community activist in Austin, and a son, Dan, who became an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

In his youth, Rather experienced a severe bout of rheumatic fever that left him bedridden for extended periods. During his recovery, he passed time listening extensively to radio broadcasts by correspondents such as Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid, which shaped his early ambition to pursue a career in journalism.

Daniel Irvin Rather Jr. was born on October 31, 1931, in Wharton County, Texas, to Daniel Irvin Rather Sr., a ditch digger and pipe layer, and Byrl Veda Page. The family moved to Houston during his childhood, and he graduated from John H. Reagan High School in 1950. He enrolled at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville, Texas, where he edited the student newspaper, The Houstonian, called sports broadcasts for local radio station KSAM-FM, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1953. He briefly attended South Texas College of Law and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1954 before receiving a medical discharge due to his childhood history of rheumatic fever.

Rather began his early professional work in print and radio across Texas, reporting for the Associated Press, United Press, and the Houston Chronicle. He worked as news director for radio station KTRH and made his television debut on KTRK-TV before joining KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston, as news director in 1960. In September 1961, Rather gained national recognition for his live broadcast coverage of Category 5 Hurricane Carla from the National Weather Center in Galveston. His innovative concept of overlaying a transparent map onto the radar display showed the storm's massive size on television for the first time, helping spur an evacuation of over 350,000 residents and prompting CBS News executives to hire him as a network correspondent in early 1962.

Upon joining CBS News, Rather served as chief of the network's Southwest bureau in Dallas and later headed its Southern bureau in New Orleans. In these roles, he covered the civil rights movement across the American South, reporting on key figures including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the integration efforts of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, and the murder of Medgar Evers. On November 22, 1963, Rather was in Dallas during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; his reporting throughout the tragedy, including his early description of the Zapruder film on national television, earned widespread attention and led to his appointment as CBS News White House correspondent in 1964.

Rather took foreign correspondent assignments in London and South Vietnam during 1965 and 1966 before returning to the White House beat to cover the presidency of Richard Nixon. Known for his direct and persistent questioning, Rather reported on Nixon's 1972 trip to China, the Watergate scandal investigations, and Nixon's eventual resignation in 1974. He subsequently served as chief correspondent for the documentary series CBS Reports and joined the primetime newsmagazine 60 Minutes as a correspondent in 1975.

On March 9, 1981, Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite as the lead anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News. Alongside rivals Tom Brokaw at NBC and Peter Jennings at ABC, Rather formed one of the "Big Three" network news anchors who dominated American evening television for more than two decades. His broadcasting style became widely recognized for his colorful colloquialisms, often referred to as "Ratherisms," and his commitment to field reporting from major overseas conflicts, including the Soviet-Afghan War, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War.

Beyond the evening anchor desk, Rather co-founded and hosted the investigative news program 48 Hours starting in 1988, and joined the spin-off 60 Minutes II as a correspondent in 1999. His high-profile reporting included exclusive interviews with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1990 and 2003, the first post-impeachment interview with President Bill Clinton in 1999, and continuous anchoring for over 53 hours in the four days following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. In early 2004, he broke the national story exposing the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq.

In September 2004, Rather reported a segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday citing newly obtained memos regarding President George W. Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Shortly after the broadcast, critics and typographical experts raised serious concerns about the authenticity of the documents, indicating that their formatting matched modern word processors rather than 1970s military typewriters. Following an internal review that revealed the network could not verify the documents, CBS retracted the report and terminated several production staff members.

Rather stepped down from the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005, exactly 24 years after his debut, concluding the longest tenure as an evening news anchor in American broadcast history. He continued to report for 60 Minutes until June 2006, when CBS announced his permanent departure after 44 years with the network. In September 2007, Rather filed a $70 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS and its parent company Viacom, asserting that he had been made a scapegoat in the controversy; the lawsuit was dismissed by a New York state appellate court in September 2009.

Following his departure from CBS, Rather partnered with Mark Cuban to launch the investigative weekly program Dan Rather Reports on HDNet (later AXS TV), hosting the series from 2006 to 2013. He subsequently hosted the AXS TV interview program The Big Interview with Dan Rather, conducting long-form discussions with major musicians, filmmakers, and cultural figures. In 2015, Rather established his own independent production company, News & Guts Media, to produce documentary specials and digital news content.

Rather expanded his presence into digital commentary, authoring books such as What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism (2017) and publishing essays on social media and his Substack newsletter, Steady. He also hosted Dan Rather's America on SiriusXM Radio and briefly fronted The News with Dan Rather on The Young Turks network. In April 2024, Rather made his first appearance on CBS News in nearly eighteen years when he was interviewed for CBS News Sunday Morning.