Laura Ingraham

38
Laura Ingraham bigraphy, stories - Radio host

Laura Ingraham : biography

June 19, 1964 –

Laura Anne Ingraham (born June 19, 1964) is an American radio talk show host, best-selling author, and conservative political commentator. Her nationally syndicated talk show, The Laura Ingraham Show, airs throughout the United States on Courtside Entertainment, and she is the official guest host for Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor.

Personal

Ingraham had become estranged from her brother, Curtis, for a number of years, but they reconciled as young adults. On February 23, 1997, she had an op-ed published in the Washington Post where she spoke of her maturing:

"In the ten years since I learned my brother Curtis was gay my views and rhetoric about homosexuality have been tempered, because I have seen him and his companion Richard lead their lives with dignity, fidelity and courage."

She was once engaged to conservative author and fellow Dartmouth alumnus Dinesh D’Souza. She also has dated former New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli. In April 2005, she announced that she was engaged to businessman James V. Reyes, with a wedding planned in May or June 2005. On April 26, 2005, she announced that she had undergone breast cancer surgery. On May 11, 2005, Ingraham told listeners that her engagement to Reyes was canceled, citing issues regarding her diagnosis with breast cancer. Despite the breakup, she maintained that the two remain good friends and had told listeners, in 2006, that she was in good health.

She is a convert to Catholicism., pp. 307-9.

In May 2008, Ingraham adopted a young girl from Guatemala, whom she has named Maria Caroline. In July 2009 she adopted a 13-month-old boy, Michael Dmitri, and two years later in June 2011 she announced the adoption of her third child, 13-month-old Nikolai Peter. Both of the boys were from Russia, a nation where Ingraham had spent considerable time earlier.

Career

Ingraham grew up in a middle-class family in Glastonbury, Connecticut, and was graduated from Glastonbury High School in 1981.

Ingraham earned a bachelor’s degree at Dartmouth College in 1985 and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree at the University of Virginia School of Law in 1991. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, she was a staff member of the independent conservative newspaper, The Dartmouth Review. In her senior year, she was the newspaper’s editor-in-chief,

its first female editor. She wrote a few controversial articles during her tenure, notably an article alleging racist and unprofessional behavior by a Dartmouth music professor Bill Cole. Cole later sued Ingraham for $2.4 million; the college paid for his lawyer. He ceased the lawsuit in 1985.James Panero and Stefan Beck, eds. The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent, pp. 43-58 

She also authored a piece characterizing a campus gay rights group as "cheerleaders for latent campus Sodomites". Additionally, she is known for having secretly taped the meetings of the LGBT student group at the time, later publishing the transcript, and the names of the officers, in the Review. Jeffrey Hart, the faculty adviser for The Dartmouth Review described Ingraham as having "the most extreme antihomosexual views imaginable," and noted that "she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual." In 1997, Ingraham wrote an essay in the Washington Post in which she stated that she changed her views after witnessing "the dignity, fidelity and courage" with which her gay brother Curtis and his late companion coped with AIDS. Ingraham regrets the "callous rhetoric" of her youth, and now supports some legal protections for homosexuals.

In the late 1980s, Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan administration for the Domestic Policy advisor. She also briefly served as editor of The Prospect, the magazine issued by Concerned Alumni of Princeton. After law school, in 1991, she served as a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York and subsequently clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She then worked as an attorney at the New York-based law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.