Gayle King
CBS News/Michele Crowe
Gayle King is co-host of "CBS This Morning." An accomplished 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. King recently began hosting a live, six-episode, weekly radio show titled "Gayle King in the House" on SiriusXM.
"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 she had a separate interview with Azriel Clary and Joycelyn Savage, the two young women who lived with him in Chicago at the time. The interviews were made into a CBS primetime special, which was that evening's No. 1 program in the time slot. King also had the first and only television interview with embattled Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam following his yearbook scandal.
King co-anchored CBS News coverage of the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In January 2020, King hosted "The Gayle King Grammy Special" which included a slate of interviews with nominees such as Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Jonas Brothers, Blake Shelton, Gwen Stefani and Lil Nas X. Additional notable interviews by King include Michelle Obama and her mother, Marian Robinson, in their first TV interview together; former President Barack Obama; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Mike Bloomberg; Bruce Springsteen; 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,broadcasts from Cleveland and Philadelphia for the 2016 Republican and Democratic Conventions as well as moderating CBS News' 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate in Charleston.
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 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. In April 2019, she was selected for the TIME 100, Time Magazine's annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world. 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 she was 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 with a degree in psychology.
The mother of a daughter, Kirby, and a son, Will, she currently resides in New York City.