Katherine was born on June 16, 1916. Her mother was an educator and her father, Eugene Meyer, was a publisher. He purchased the failing Washington Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933. Young Katherine began working there five years later.
In 1940, Katherine married Philip Graham. She left the Post after five years of marriage in order to raise a family, and remained away for 18 years. In that time, Philip became publisher of the paper and bought out Eugene Meyer's voting sock. During this time, the Post also acquired the Times-Herald and Newsweek.
When Philip committed suicide in 1963, Katherine was unexpectedly thrust into the presidency of the company. From 1969 to 1979, Graham was also publisher of the paper. She was board chairman and chief executive officer of the Washington Post Company from 1973 until 1991, and remained Chairman of the Executive Committee until her death.
In 1997, Graham released her memoirs, Personal History. The book was lauded for Katherine's honest portrayal of her husband's mental illness, and Katherine received a Pulitzer Prize for her book in 1998.
She guided The Washington Post through its historic coverage of the toppling of a president, won a Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography, Personal History, and ruled Washington's political and media scene in a style that was inimitably her own. Occasionally, she went to the movies with Henry Kissinger. Certainly, a life to be remembered.
Katherine was injured in a fall in Idaho in June 2001 and died from complications of that fall on July 17, 2001.
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