NEW YORK, March 17 (UPI) -- Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Cronkite, the wife of retired CBS News anchorman and former United Press correspondent Walter Cronkite, has died. She was 89.
A spokeswoman for Cronkite, Julie Sukman, said Betsy Cronkite died of complications of cancer Tuesday night at the couple's apartment in Manhattan. The Cronkites were married nearly 65 years.
The couple met while both worked at radio station KCMO in Kansas City, Mo. Mary Elizabeth Maxwell was an advertising writer and Walter was a newsman. He left KCMO to work for United Press in 1937, and the couple were married on March 30, 1940. Soon after their marriage she was named women's editor of the Kansas City Journal-Post.
Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Cronkite went to Europe as a UP war correspondent and Mrs. Cronkite worked in Kansas City for Hallmark, publishing a company newsletter.
After the war, the Cronkites lived in Brussels, Belgium, and then in Moscow, where Cronkite was UP chief correspondent for two years. Cronkite went to work for CBS in 1950 in Washington and later New York, where he anchored the CBS Evening News for 19 years.
Mrs. Cronkite is survived by her 88-year-old husband, two daughters, Nancy and Kathy; a son, Walter III; and four grandsons. Sukman said a private memorial was planned.
