All About Barbara Walters’ Daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber (2024)

Barbara Walters made history as the first female news anchor in the United States, but she also had a busy life at home.

Walters, who died in December 2022 at age 93, was a mom to one daughter: Jacqueline Dena Guber. The TV personality adopted Jacqueline with her ex-husband Lee Guber in 1968, shortly after she was born on June 14 of that year.

“[My mother] used to say that some mothers have babies from their tummies, and some have it from their heart. And you came from my heart,” Jacqueline told NBC in 2002.

Walters doubled down on the sentiment, sharing that her love for her daughter was undeniable.

“There is no question of our love for each other. None,” Walters told NBC in 2002. “And it’s one of the reasons that she’s never particularly wanted to find her biological mother. It’s not, ‘Who’s my mother?’ I’m her mother.”

Jacqueline also talked about her bond with her mother in their joint Glamour interview.

"We have come to appreciate each other's quirks,” she said. "If my mom wasn't my mom, I would still want to be her friend. That says a lot. We believe 100 percent in each other, and I think that that's what love is all about."

Years before her death, the former journalist expressed her hopes for her legacy in her 2014 retirement special, Barbara Walters: Her Story, saying, "I want to be remembered by my daughter as a good and loving mother."

Here's everything to know about Barbara Walters' daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber.

Walters adopted Jacqueline as a newborn

Though Walters wanted to have a child, she struggled to have a viable pregnancy. "I had three miscarriages, and finally, my husband Lee Guber and I adopted a baby girl,” she said in Barbara Walters: Her Story.

According to the media mogul, she adopted her daughter in an unconventional way.

“We had dinner one night with a couple we rarely saw,” Walters said in a 2014 interview with Oprah Winfrey. “The woman said that she had a little girl ... and they wanted to adopt a boy ... They didn’t want the girl. And we said, 'We’ll take the girl!’ ”

Walters kept the adoption a secret, however. She told NBC in 2002 that the decision was “in part because I really didn’t want the biological mother to know that Jackie had been adopted by us.”

According to Walters, people weren’t always respectful of her journey to motherhood, either. ​​

"When you have an adopted child, people can't understand that it's yours," she said. "I've said [she's] born in my heart. Maybe not in my uterus, but in my heart."

Jacqueline was named after her mother’s older sister

As Walters explained in her 2014 retirement special, she named her daughter after her older sister Jacqueline.

"My sister was very pretty and very sweet. She was what we would probably call 'developmentally challenged' today,” she once told PEOPLE, adding, “I loved her dearly."

The news anchor was motivated to name her daughter after Jacqueline, who died in 1985 of ovarian cancer, because it was a way to give her sibling something she couldn't have.

“I knew that my sister was never going to be married and have a child, and I wanted her to have part of the joy that I had,” Walters said in her 2014 special. “And so, I named my daughter Jacqueline after my sister."

She has two siblings

Prior to adopting Jacqueline with Walters, Lee had two children from his previous marriage to Edna Shanis: Zev and Carol.

Jacqueline's father died of brain cancer in 1988.

She helped her mom to “lighten up”

In a 2009 interview with The Television Academy Foundation, Walters revealed that her daughter helped her to see the humor in SNL star Gilda Radner’s impression of her. The famed mimicry included Radner exaggerating the former The View star’s speech and referring to herself as “Baba Wawa.”

"I hated the Gilda Radner 'Baba Wawa' until I walked into my daughter's room one night. She was up watching it ... I said, 'What are you doing up?' and she said, 'I'm watching Baba Wawa,’ ” Walters told The Television Academy Foundation.

When she protested, Jacqueline reportedly told her to “lighten up." Walters shared, "And then I did."

Jacqueline spent three years at an intervention program

In the summer of 1984, Jacqueline ran away for a month, traveling 800 miles across the southwest.

“I was a runaway,” she told NBC in 2002. “I loved to run. I thought running would solve all my problems.” Walters eventually got a phone call from a man Jacqueline had been hitchhiking with, who let her know how to find her daughter.

Following the incident, Walters sent a former soldier to retrieve her daughter and bring her to a school in Idaho for troubled teens, where the teenager remained for the next three years. Jacqueline later credited the facility with saving her life.

While there, the pair began to write letters to each other "in which we could really listen to each other," Jacqueline told Glamour in 2008.

Walters also supported her daughter on her healing journey, visiting often and meeting with the staff whenever she was asked. "You feel that kind of support,” Jacqueline said of her mother.

She ran a wilderness retreat for troubled teens for seven years

In 1999, Jacqueline moved to Maine from Oregon and later, opened a therapy program for troubled teens called New Horizons.

“I always have thought that if everybody else can do it, I can, too,” she told NBC. “I sat back, and I thought what would be the best business that I could run? ... It’s one of those things where I jump in with two feet. And I ask a lot of questions.”

The therapy program closed in 2008 due to financial strain.

In an open letter announcing the closure, Jacqueline wrote: “As we all understand our economy is struggling and the families that we provide these needed services for are being impacted. Since the end of August our admissions have ceased and our phones have stopped ringing. New Horizons for Young Women cannot sustain during this economic crisis.”

Jacqueline stays out of the spotlight

Unlike her famous mom, Jacqueline prefers to live her life outside of the spotlight.

"Jackie has found it difficult all her life because she wants to be anonymous, she just doesn't like to be a celebrity,” Walters said in her 2014 retirement special. “She may be the only one in the world who doesn't like to be a celebrity."

Jacqueline has stayed out of the public eye since her mother’s death.