Who are Meredith Vieira’s kids? Looking back at Journalist’s decision to step back from 60 Minutes to raise her children

Meredith Vieira's family is coming into the spotlight as the veteran journalist just lost her husband. Vieira shared three kids, Gabriel, Lily, and Benjamin Cohen, with her late husband of 38 years, Richard Cohen. The latter succumbed to a bout of pneumonia on Christmas Eve this past year.

He was “surrounded by his family and love." Sources close to the journalist told Closer Magazine that reflecting on her decision to leave 60 Minutes in 1991 to focus on raising her family, Meredith Vieira once said:

"Once I became a mom myself; that all I really wanted to be was her. I was saying I don’t want to do that, I want to go out in the world and be a professional, or whatever the heck that is and once I became a mom I just wanted to emulate my mom and her values and what she instilled in her kids.”

Everything we know about Meredith Vieira's three children as the TV personality once said she was accused of "setting women back" for stepping down

As for what we know about the kids, reportedly, today, all three are well into their thirties, though their occupations and other such details remain scarce. Meredith Vieira seemingly shares a close kin with her children, as she once told Closer Magazine how she handled being an empty nester once all three left for college:

"It has reached the point, I was saying to a friend … [Lily will] call me or I’ll call her and say, ‘What’s new?’ And I’ll say, ‘Nothing, what’s new with you?’ And she says, ‘Nothing, OK bye!’ We no longer do all the little small talk, but we talk every single day."

As for Gabe Cohen, it was confirmed in April 2019 that he was engaged to Alli Flicker, a former KHQ reporter. Speaking during an episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna in June 2022, as reported by Closer Magazine, she said:

"A few weeks ago, I was here and I was talking to Hoda and I told her I had a secret. And I couldn’t tell anybody. And we were talking about how hard it is to keep a secret. But now I can tell everybody. My son Gabe … got engaged.”

She revealed that he proposed to his then-girlfriend by the lake with his mother's ring inside the box. As for her last child, daughter Lily Cohen, Meredith Vieira once told the outlet that she is a “smart kid” and “has always surrounded herself with really good friends.”

During the same episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna, Meredith Vieira reflected on what life for her was like when she left the industry:

"And to be a woman in the industry at that moment was big. But then to say to the boss and all the women out there, 'I've had a change of heart]…' But my back was up against the wall, literally," Vieira explained. "I was picking between my family and my job at that point, so it was an easy call the minute that it happened. And Don's baby, to be honest, and fair to him, was 60 Minutes. So we both were taking care of our kids."

She added that a few days later, a woman ambushed her at a party before she "backed [her] up into a wall" and said, "You have set us back. You were a poster child for doing it all and now you do this. And it's such a negative message."

"And I said, 'Wait a minute, first of all, I don't want to be a poster child for anybody. Secondly, if I wasn't true to myself, doesn't that send a worse message?' But that really threw me and it came from a woman," she continued. "And I get where she was coming from, but it was sort of like, 'Whoa.' "

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Not much else is known about Meredith Vieira's family at the time of writing, and the family has yet to issue an official statement about the passing of Richard Cohen.

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