Alan Sawyer
Barbara Walters, a beloved American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality, may have had a health scare recently but she is still going strong at 92 years old. She was the “Today Girl,” known as a co-host on the Today Show, moderated a presidential debate, hosted ABC’s 20/20, and hosted the Barbara Walters Special, with her first guests being a President and First Lady.
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The New York City-born talk show host started a family of her own, including only one child, her daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber.
Walters and Lee Guber, her second husband, gained Danforth through an adoption, in 1968 — the year she was born.
Had the creator of The View not experienced several miscarriages, Danforth may not have been brought into their lives. It seems a very specific plan was at play. As the story has been told, after her miscarriages, Guber and Walters were at dinner with a couple they didn’t see often. The couple expressed that they wanted to adopt a little boy and mentioned the little girl they were essentially going to pass on; this was little soon to be Jacqueline Dena Guber.
Growing up, Walters’ daughter had a bit of a rough time at being the child of a public figure. At just 13 years old, when her mom was engaged to Merv Adelson, a film executive, Danforth started skipping school. She often found herself at New York’s famous Studio 54. In high school, she tried to run away the next year and hitchhiked her way to California. She was also a young, heavy drug user from quaaludes, methamphetamines, valium; you name it, she did it. She admitted all of this in an interview in2003 on NBC.
On the same topic, her mother said: Walters said,
“I did not want to read about Jackie in a tabloid.. I just knew that for this child, who was struggling enough to be her own person and not be Barbara Walter’s daughter, to have this be headlines. I could have lived with it…But it would have been terrible for her”.
Her mother put her in a detox intervention program in Idaho, and Danforth claims that it saved her life. She remained there for 3 years. When she emerged, she was clean and excited for life. However, she did get caught up with a misdemeanor DUI in Florida in 2013.
Jaqueline has married twice, to Mark Danforth, who she met on the East Coast in Maine. While there, she created a wilderness camp that was a positive influence on her life. More recently, she married Dennis Pinkham. They live a private life.
