News great Cokie dies

Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts — who grew up surrounded by politics and used her experience to become one of the country’s most insightful commentators — has died, her family said Tuesday.

Roberts, 75, succumbed to breast cancer. She was first diagnosed with the disease in 2002.

“Cokie’s career as a journalist at National Public Radio and ABC News took her to the heights of her profession, and her success as an author on history and family put her on the best-seller list,’’ her family said in a statement.

“But her values put family and relationships above all else.’’

Roberts was born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs. Her older brother Tommy couldn’t pronounce her chosen first name, Corinne, so he called her Cokie instead — and the moniker would become a household name for her generation.

She grew up the daughter of two Congress members from Louisiana: Hale and Lindy Boggs.

A few years ago, the journalist said she felt lucky to cover a territory so wellknown to her family.

“It is such a privilege — you have a front seat to history,” she told Kentucky Educational Television in 2017.

“You do get used to it, and you shouldn’t, because it is a very special thing to be able to be in the room . . . when all kinds of special things are happening.”

Last month, Roberts — who wed college sweetheart and fellow journalist Steven Roberts in 1966 — acknowledged that she had been battling renewed medical problems.

“Over the summer, I have had some health issues which required treatment that caused weight loss. I am doing fine,” she said in a statement.

When Roberts was first diagnosed with cancer 15 years ago, she said she took it in stride, given what her family had been through.

Her father died in an Alaska plane crash in 1972, and her sister, former Princeton, NJ, Mayor Barbara Boggs Sigmund, passed away from cancer in 1990.

“I lost my father at age 58 in a terrible accident, and I lost my sister at age 51. So I didn’t need any extra perspective on life,” Roberts told The Washington Post.

She leaves behind her husband and their two adult children, Lee and Rebecca.