Margaret Jane Pauley (born October 31, 1950) is an American television host, and author, active in news reporting since 1972. Pauley first became widely known as Barbara Walters's successor on the NBC morning show Today, beginning at the age of 25, where she was a co-anchor from 1976 to 1989, at first with Tom Brokaw, and later with Bryant Gumbel; for a short while in the late 1980s she and Gumbel worked with Deborah Norville. In 1989, with her job apparently threatened by Norville's addition to the program, she asked to be released from her contract, but her request was denied. Her next regular anchor position was at the network's newsmagazine Dateline NBC from 1992 to 2003, where she teamed with Stone Phillips. In 2003, Pauley left NBC News and in 2004–05 hosted The Jane Pauley Show, a syndicated daytime talk show which was canceled after one season. In 2009, she began to appear on The Today Show as a contributor hosting a weekly segment sponsored by AARP called “Your Life Calling.” In 2014, Pauley appeared as an interview subject on the CBS program CBS Sunday Morning; positive audience response to this segment led to Pauley being hired as a contributor to the show later in 2014. She was elevated to the role of the program's host in 2016, succeeding Charles Osgood, once again making her the anchor of a regular morning news program for the first time in over 25 years and becoming her first job as the host of any television program since 2005; she continues in this role as of 2022. She has publicly acknowledged her struggle with bipolar disorder. She is married to the cartoonist Garry Trudeau, creator of the comic strip Doonesbury. Early life Margaret Jane Pauley was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on October 31, 1950. She is a fifth-generation Hoosier and the second child of Richard Grandison Pauley and Mary E. (née Patterson) Pauley. Her father was a traveling salesman, and her mother was a homemaker. According to her memoir, Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue, Pauley described herself as such a shy little kid she allowed her second-grade teacher to call her Margaret Pauley all year rather than tell her she preferred her middle name, Jane. Pauley grew up idolizing her older sister, Ann, who has been her closest confidante since childhood. A speech and debate champion at Warren Central High School