in 1939. She continued attending public school in Miami Beach. After her father moved the family to New York City, she spent eighth grade at the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School, after which the family moved back to Miami Beach. She then went back to New York City after tenth grade, where she attended Birch Wathen School, another private school. In 1951, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Career Early career Walters was employed for about a year at a small advertising agency in New York City and began working at the NBC network's flagship station WNBT-TV (now WNBC), doing publicity and writing press releases. In 1953 she produced a 15-minute children's program, Ask the Camera, which was directed by Roone Arledge. She also started producing for TV host Igor Cassini (Cholly Knickerbocker), but left the network after Cassini pressured her to marry him and started a fistfight with the man she was interested in. She went to WPIX to produce the Eloise McElhone Show, which was canceled in 1954. She became a writer on The Morning Show at CBS in 1955. The Today Show After a few years working at Tex McCrary Inc. as a publicist and as a writer at Redbook magazine, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. She moved up becoming the show's regular "Today Girl," handling lighter assignments and the weather. In her autobiography, she described this era before the Women's Movement as a time when it was believed that nobody would take a woman seriously reporting "hard news." Previous "Today Girls" (whom Walters called "tea pourers") included Florence Henderson, Helen O'Connell, Estelle Parsons, and Lee Meriwether. Within a year, she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. One very well-received film segment was "A Day in the Life of a Nun." Another was about the daily life of a Playboy Bunny. Beginning in 1971, Walters hosted her own local NBC affiliate show, Not for Women Only, which ran in the mornings after The Today Show. Walters had a great relationship with host Hugh Downs for years. When Frank McGee was named host in 1971, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first three questions. She was not named co-host of the show until McGee's death in