Journalist, TV Personality Barbara Walters to Undergo Heart Surgery

By Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times

During Monday's taping of The View, journalist Barbara Walters announced she is scheduled to undergo heart surgery, that she said would come as a surprise for many of her friends, later this week to replace a faulty heart valve.

When asked why she had not made the announcement sooner, Walters responded, "I thought it best not to talk about it too far in advance.''

Walters, who knew for sometime she needed to have the surgery, said she has felt no symptoms of the narrowing of the heart valve, which can worsen and restrict the flow of blood to the heart.

Whoopi Goldberg, her co-host on ABC's "The View,'' asked Walters if she is scared.

"Look, nobody wants to have this kind of surgery,'' replied Walters, but added that it has become more commonplace and done safely.

Walters said she plans to take the summer off from "The View'' in order to recuperate.

"Since the summer is coming up,'' she said, "I can take a nice vacation.''

Walters, 80, is the author of books "How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything," which began as an article until Doubleday made the TV personality an offer she couldn't refuse and her 2008 autobiography, "Audition: A Memoir."

Walters, the first woman to anchor network evening news, leads the industry in top-rated interviews and is well-known for her "personality journalism" style.

Some of her more memorable interviews are the Monica Lewinsky interview in 1999, which scored a cool 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a journalist's interview; the late Michael Jackson; her joint interview with Egypt's President Anwar Al Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem in 1977; the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife the Empress Farah Pahlavi; Russia's Boris Yeltsin, Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as India's Indira Gandhi and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

In 1997, Walters, who has married and divorced three times, created "The View," an all-woman daily talk show co-starring former comedian, actress Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and actress Sherri Shepherd.