Greta Conway Van Susteren is an American sports writer and pundit. She is a former CNN, Fox News, and NBC News television news anchor with over 25 years of experience. She hosted ‘On the Record with Greta Van Susteren’ for 14 years on Fox Channel. Greta spent more than a decade at CNN, where she worked as a legal expert and co-host of ‘Burden of Proof’ for eight years, as well as hosting the news show ‘The Point.’ She has traversed the world, including unstable countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan, and met with presidents, secretaries of state, and defense secretaries. She has a long history of interviewing notable personalities from the sports and entertainment worlds. She was voted the 94th most influential woman in the world by Forbes Magazine in 2016. She was also given the ‘Honest and Fairness’ award by the Israeli American Council in 2016.
Career of Greta
Greta Van Susteren worked as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center in addition to her full-time legal practice prior to her television career. She worked as a legal analyst for CNN during the O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1991, which led to her co-hosting the legal talk show ‘Burden of Proof’ and the news program ‘The Point.’ She appeared as a celebrity guest on Cartoon Network’s ‘Space Ghost Coast to Coast’ in 1988.
She quit CNN in 2002 because her relationship with the network deteriorated. She then joined Fox News Channel. She began anchoring ‘On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,’ a talk show about current events.
She left Fox News on September 6, 2016, after 14 years of service. Her exit from the channel, on the other hand, was a shambles. She was notified via courier that she “was being yanked off the air” immediately, without being given the opportunity to say goodbye to her audience. Rupert Murdoch, the father of Fox’s parent firm 21st Century Fox, is said to have objected to her attempt to renegotiate her contract, which included a large pay raise. Fox’s ‘On the Record’ website and her Gretawire blog were both taken down after she left. Van Susteren, on the other hand, resorted to Facebook to explain her departure. Brit Hume was quickly inserted into the ‘On the Record’ anchor slot by the network.
She inked a deal with NBC News in early 2017 to host an ET show on the company’s news channel, MSNBC. ‘For the Record with Greta,’ a new show, premiered on January 9, 2017. However, she was unceremoniously fired by MSNBC on June 29, 2017, after less than six months on the job. Despite the fact that she had given no indication that she was in trouble, her show had been performing poorly in the ratings.
Personal Experiences of Greta
Greta Van Susteren was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on June 11, 1954. Urban Van Susteren, her father, was of Dutch ancestry. He was a US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign strategist and an elected judge. McCarthy had been the best man at her parents’ wedding and was a close friend of her father’s. Margery Conway, her mother, was of Irish heritage. In Bethesda, Maryland, Greta’s sister Lise works as a forensic psychiatrist. In 2006, she ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. Dirk Van Susteren, Greta’s brother, was the long-time editor of the ‘Vermont Sunday’ magazine.
Greta Van Susteren graduated from Appleton’s Xavier High School in 1972 and the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976, where she majored in geography and received a distinction in economics. She also received a Juris Doctor and a Master of Law from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979 and 1982, respectively. She received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Stetson Law School.
She married John P. Coale, a tort lawyer, in 1988 and they had no children together. Before meeting Greta, Coale had been married twice. They are members of the Scientology Church. Her husband was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent open-heart surgery as a result. The pair is currently residing in Washington, D.C.
Van Susteren is a member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and the National Institute for Civil Discourse’s Board of Directors (NICD). She and her husband started The Greta Home and Academy, an orphanage and school, in 2012. From August 2006 to January 2014, she was a co-owner of the Old Mill Inn, a restaurant in Mattituck, New York.
‘My Turn at the Bully Pulpit: Straight Talk About The Things That Drive Me Nuts,’ is Greta’s co-authored book.