Greta Van Susteren

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Greta Van Susteren, on FOX News.

Greta Van Susteren (born June 11, 1954 in Appleton, Wisconsin) is an American journalist and television personality on the Fox News Channel where she hosts On the Record, the highest rated program on cable news at 10 p.m. (EST). She previously worked at CNN from 1991 to 2002. She is married to Washington, D.C. lawyer John Coale.

[edit] Biography

Van Susteren graduated from Xavier High School in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1972, and earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. Van Susteren also studied law at Georgetown University Law Center, earning both a Juris Doctor and a Master of Laws (1979, 1982). She is of Irish ancestry on her mother's side as well as 1/4 Dutch, 1/8th French and 1/8th German on her father's. ^[1] Her father, Urban Van Susteren was an old friend, fellow law student, and later campaign strategist for Joe McCarthy's successful 1946 U.S. Senate campaign where he defeated two-term incumbent Robert LaFollette, Jr., in a three-candidate race. During his Senate career, McCarthy lived in the Van Susterens' Appleton home whenever he was not in Washington^[2].

Van Susteren's sister, Lise, was formerly a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate from the state of Maryland. Lise is a forensic psychiatrist from Bethesda, Maryland. ^[3] ^[4] Greta is also a practicing Scientologist. ^[5]

She first came to prominence in 1991, covering the William Kennedy Smith trial for CNN; however, her coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder case made her widely recognizable and respected as a legal analyst. She was noticed by the network's programming executives and was given a co-anchor spot alongside political analyst Roger Cossack on the legal affairs news show Burden of Proof. She also hosted the primetime program The Point with Greta Van Susteren, which was the second highest rated program on CNN.

In 2002, the Fox News Channel snagged her in a highly-publicized contract bidding war, which Van Susteren admitted included an incident where she was headed to New York to talk with Fox management when her flight was cancelled because of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

With the funds she received from her new contract, Van Susteren obtained a facelift, blepharoplasty, and dental implants. This act received considerable media coverage (e.g. a People cover story entitled "Nipped, Tucked, and Talking"), which included speculation that Fox had required the surgery before allowing the "plain" Van Susteren on the air.

Since that time, she has hosted the current affairs show On the Record with Greta Van Susteren and has become one of the network's more popular personalities, on par with Bill O'Reilly and Shepard Smith. Van Susteren tends to take a neutral stance and allows her regular guest panelists to slug it out.