Barbara Walters’ Biographer Reveals Her Final Words And Resting Place

Barbara Walters died in December 2022 at the age of 93. Now, the life of the iconic broadcast journalist will be remembered in a new biography from author and journalist Susan Page.

Titled The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, the “definitive biography” is slated to release in 2024. Axios published an excerpt from the biography, revealing Walters’ final words and where she was laid to rest, two key details that have been kept under wraps since she passed.

According to Page, Walters’ final words were: “No regrets — I had a great life.”

Axios also shared an image of Walters’ never-before-seen gravestone, which is engraved with the same words.

“Barbara was buried, as she had wished, next to [family members] at Lakeside Memorial Park in Miami,” Page wrote in Walters’ biography, per Axios. “Their small black and gold markers sit in narrow marble frames.”

Page began conducting interviews for The Rulebreaker two years before Walters died. The biography’s description from publisher Simon & Schuster states Page conducted over 150 interviews and extensive archival research to learn more about the broadcast journalist, and to uncover “the secrets she kept until her death.”

Walters made a name for herself as an anchor on The Today Show and 20/20, where she interviewed the likes of Monica Lewinsky and became known for her blunt style of interviewing. She went on to create and host The View in 1997, which has remained a mainstay in daytime television and news even 26 years later. She retired and left the show in 2014.

“I knew it was time,” Walters said at the time of her departure from The View, per CNN. “I like all the celebration, that’s great, but in my heart, I thought, ‘I want to walk away while I’m still doing good work.’ So I will.”

In a press release, Page described Walters as being “a figure of historical import,” writing, “She knew fascinating people… and she knew how to make them talk. She fished with Fidel Castro, dated John Warner, and grilled Monica Lewinsky.”

She continued, “There were costs, professionally and personally, but she is a consequential, complicated woman, who defied expectations and expanded the opportunities for those who followed in her footsteps.”

Page, who is currently the D.C. bureau chief of USA Today, previously penned bestselling novels about Barbara Bush and Nancy Pelosi.

The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters will release on April 23, 2024.