PBS on November 10, 1969. In its first season, the show won three Emmys, a Peabody, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine. According to Newsday, "Scores of glowing newspaper and magazine stories fluttered down on Mrs. Cooney and her workshop like confetti onto the heads of conquering heroes". Les Brown of Variety called Cooney "St. Joan". Cooney later reported, "The reception was so incredible. The press adored us; the parents adored us." The first year Sesame Street was on the air, Cooney was, as Davis put it, "inundated with attention". Cooney reported that the requests for interviews from the press "were endless", and attributed it to the emergence of the women's movement in the early 1970s. Cooney also testified before Congressional hearings on children and television, starting before the show's premiere. In 1969, the Cooneys, who were childless, became "de facto foster parents to an inner-city black child" whom Tim met while working in Harlem for a civil rights organization. Eventually, the child returned to live with his mother and was killed in New York City before he turned 30. The Cooneys' marriage, which Davis called "turbulent", ended in 1975. Due to Tim's long history of alcoholism, he was unable to support himself, so Cooney paid him alimony until his death in 1999. In August 1975, nine months after separating from her husband, Cooney was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a radical mastectomy. In 1980, Cooney married businessman Peter G. "Pete" Peterson, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Richard Nixon. They met when Peterson was on the board of National Educational Television, during her presentation of Sesame Street to them. They were married for 37 years, until his death in 2018. From her marriage to Peterson, she had five stepchildren and nine grandchildren. Later years Cooney remained the chairman and chief executive officer of the CTW until 1990 when she stepped down and was replaced by David Britt, whom Cooney called her "right-hand for many years". Britt had worked for her at the CTW since 1975 and had been its president and chief operating officer since 1988. At that time, she became chairman of the CTW's executive board, which oversaw its businesses and licensing, and became more involved in the organization's creative side. Cooney served on several committees and corporate boards, including the Mayo Foundation, Chase Manhattan Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and Metropolitan Life Insurance.