I somehow missed that episode, but I am posting the link here for those interested in that story.
Apparently, old Charlie wouldn't divorce his wife, the late Petie Baird Kuralt, because she was ill with something or other.
Here is a snip from the interview:
KING: I mean, we're all befuddled by it.
SHANNON: Yes, well, I would like to just propose a theory, and that's that number one, Charles was, as we all know, an honorable man.
KING: Everybody loved him.
SHANNON: Yes, rightly so, and he would never have done anything deliberately dishonest. He was a man who threw most of his talents and his energies into holding up this portrait of America to ourselves. And it was only a portion of himself that he kept back for his private life. And when we first met, he was 33. I was 34. He was on his second marriage. He thought it was failing.
KING: You were divorced with a son.
SHANNON: I was divorced, had three children.
KING: Two daughters...
SHANNON: Two daughters and a son. And he was very busy. I was busy. I was working, and we thought everything would work out.
KING: As a kind of an affair or was the result and hope that he would get divorced?
SHANNON: Yes, we were a family and he joined our family.
And he even squired her around New York, right in his wife's own backyard:
KING: But you came to New York, right?
SHANNON: I came to New York.
KING: And you went out together in New York.
SHANNON: Yes, we went out.
KING: Did friends see you together?
SHANNON: Well, I suppose so.
KING: Did he introduce you?
SHANNON: Yes, he always introduced me. I was always Pat Shannon, and perhaps part of it was just the times that nobody questioned us going to dinner and we weren't in the fast track. You know, Charles, he was...
And she did work, at least in the beginning:
SHANNON: Yes, I worked of course, and when we first met, I was working for Sierra Pacific Power Company, and then shortly after the park, I went to work for Paul Laxalt, who was governor of Nevada at the time.
KING: Ah, Paul, a good friend of ours.
SHANNON: Yes. Oh, he's lovely. I...
KING: Did he know about this?
SHANNON: He did. He knew -- I mean, Charles and he when they were at conventions used to pass little high signs, I think, and so I worked for Paul, and then he took a temporary retirement and didn't run for governor a second term. And so he got me a job down with the Labor Department down in San Francisco. And so we all just moved down, and...
Ah, those Republican values. Think of it, Paul Laxalt, onetime governor of Nevada and later senator, knew all about the affair.
There's a lot more at the link. I am surprised I never saw this interview, which was done after she won her court battle up in Montana.
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