Quick Take
- Narration: Steve Roberts narrating his own tribute to his late wife is an unusual choice that pays off; the grief and love in his voice are not performed but simply present, and that makes all the difference.
- Themes: Women breaking barriers in broadcast journalism, marriage as partnership and anchor, public service and private devotion
- Mood: Warm, celebratory, and genuinely moved
- Verdict: A loving tribute that earns its emotion because the narrator is also the person who lost the most.
There is an obvious risk when a husband writes and narrates a memoir about his late wife: the account risks becoming hagiography, a record so suffused with grief and admiration that the subject disappears into an ideal. Steve Roberts is aware of this risk, and in Cokie he navigates it with more self-awareness than the format might lead you to expect. He is not writing journalism here. He is writing love. But love, in Roberts’s hands, turns out to be fully compatible with accuracy.
Cokie Roberts died in September 2019 after a career spanning more than four decades at NPR and ABC, during which she became one of the most recognizable voices in American political journalism. The biography the synopsis describes is extensive: trailblazer for women, fixture on national television and radio, author of five bestselling books on women in American history, answer to crossword puzzle clues. She was, in short, an institution. What Steve Roberts does in this audiobook is insist that the institution was also a person, and that the person was more interesting than the institution.
The Voice That Named the Tribute
Steve Roberts narrating his own text is the production’s defining choice, and I want to be clear about what this means in practice. This is not a polished, professional narrator reading clean prose in a studio. This is a husband in his eighties reading aloud about the woman he spent fifty-three years married to, who died before he was ready, and whose absence is present on every page. His voice occasionally catches. His pacing is not always as controlled as a professional reader’s would be. None of this matters. The rawness is the point.
One reviewer described this as a thorough, insightful, charming portrait of an extraordinary woman, and noted that Roberts’s vivid and fluid prose, combined with his undying great love, produces something compelling. That is right. Another reviewer raised the concern that Cokie is presented so uniformly well that she risks seeming too good to be true, awarding four stars rather than five for exactly this reason. I understand the criticism. But I also think it misunderstands the genre slightly. A tribute written by a spouse within three years of bereavement is not supposed to be a balanced critical biography. It is supposed to capture how someone was loved, and this one does that with complete honesty.
Journalism, Gender, and the Glass Ceiling at NPR
The sections of the book dealing with Cokie Roberts’s career contain the material most likely to be new even to longtime readers of her work. Steve Roberts writes about the specific incidents of discrimination she faced as a woman at NPR in the 1970s and 1980s with the directness of someone who was present and angry. These passages have a different register than the more personal sections, more journalistic, more willing to name names and describe structural barriers. They are the sections where Cokie Roberts the public figure intersects most directly with Cokie Roberts the person her husband knew privately.
Roberts describes how she was systematically underpaid, how she had to fight for on-air positions that her male peers were offered without negotiation, and how she navigated these obstacles without losing either her effectiveness or her relationships. The reviewer who described reading the book with stories full of discrimination and glass ceilings was responding to this material, and it gives the book a substance beyond personal tribute.
What a Marriage of 53 Years Sounds Like
The love story between Steve and Cokie Roberts, a Catholic girl from Louisiana and a Jewish boy from New York, is threaded through everything here. Their marriage is presented not as a background fact but as the architecture of both their lives, and Steve Roberts writes about it with the particular honesty of someone who knows that the person he is describing also knew his flaws and loved him anyway. There is a section where he describes arguments they had, decisions that were difficult, moments where their differences caused friction, and his willingness to include these without resolution or excuse makes the account of their love more believable, not less.
At seven hours, Cokie is a comfortable audiobook length that fits the material. Long enough to feel substantial, short enough that the emotional pitch does not become exhausting.
The Right and Wrong Listeners for This Book
This audiobook is not for people who want a rigorous journalistic biography of Cokie Roberts. It is for people who want to understand what it was like to know her, to love her, and to watch American journalism as she shaped it. Roberts does not pretend to neutrality and should not be asked to provide it. Listeners who loved Cokie Roberts’s work on NPR and ABC will find exactly what they are looking for here. Those who come seeking critical distance or institutional analysis will need a different book. Those who are in or have been in a long marriage will find much here that feels profoundly true regardless of whether they ever heard of Cokie Roberts before.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Steve Roberts’s narration professional enough to be easy to listen to for seven hours?
It is not polished in the way a professional audiobook narrator would be, but it is entirely listenable. His voice is warm and clear, and the moments where it catches with emotion are part of the experience rather than a distraction.
Does the book cover the full scope of Cokie Roberts’s journalism career, including her political coverage?
Yes, with emphasis on her career at NPR and ABC News, her work as a political analyst, and her coverage of Congress. The career material is woven with personal material rather than presented as a separate professional biography.
How does Roberts handle Cokie’s Catholic faith, which was a significant part of her identity?
Faith is a recurring presence throughout the book and Roberts treats it seriously as a motivating force in how Cokie approached both her work and her personal commitments, including her extensive charitable activities.
Is this audiobook appropriate for younger listeners who may not remember Cokie Roberts from her NPR and ABC years?
Yes, though the cultural context requires some patience. Roberts provides enough background that the book works for listeners unfamiliar with her career, and the sections on gender discrimination in broadcast journalism are particularly relevant to audiences of any age.
