Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric (born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and author. She currently serves as Special Correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials. Starting in Fall 2012, she will host Katie, a daytime talk show on ABC. She has anchored the CBS Evening News, reported for 60 Minutes, and hosted Today. She was the first solo female anchor of a weekday evening news program on one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks. Couric's first book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary was a New York Times best-seller.

Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and the late John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Jewish, but Couric was raised Episcopalian. Couric's maternal grandparents, Bert Hene and Clara L. Froshin, were the children of Jewish immigrants from Germany. In a report for Today, she traced her paternal ancestry back to a French orphan who immigrated to the U.S. in the nineteenth century and became a broker in the cotton business.

Couric attended Arlington Public Schools: Jamestown Elementary, Williamsburg Middle School, and Yorktown High School and was a cheerleader. As a high school student, she was an intern at Washington, D.C. all-news radio station WAVA. She enrolled at her father's alma mater, the University of Virginia, in 1975 and was a Delta Delta Delta sorority sister. Couric served in several positions at UVA's award-winning daily newspaper, The Cavalier Daily. During her third year at UVA, Couric was chosen to live as Head Resident of The Lawn, the heart of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village. She graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in English with a focus on American Studies.