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Quick Facts
- NAME: Joan Lunden
- OCCUPATION: Talk Show Host, News Anchor, Journalist
- BIRTH DATE: September 19, 1950 (Age: 62)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Fair Oaks, California
- Originally: Joan Elise Blunden
- ZODIAC SIGN: Virgo
Best Known For
Journalist, television personality and author Joan London was on Good Morning America for nearly two decades, and was one of the most popular TV co-hosts.
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Play NowJoan Lunden. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 09:14, May 21, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764.
Joan Lunden. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764 [Accessed 21 May 2013].
"Joan Lunden." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 21 2013, 09:14 http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764.
"Joan Lunden," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764 [accessed May 21, 2013].
"Joan Lunden," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764 (accessed May 21, 2013).
Joan Lunden [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 21] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764.
Joan Lunden, http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764 (last visited May 21, 2013).
Joan Lunden. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/joan-lunden-262764. Accessed May 21, 2013.
Outside of GMA, Lunden continued to work on a number of projects, including a short-lived syndicated show, Everyday with Joan Lunden, which was produced by her husband.
After GMA
Near the end of her tenure with GMA, Lunden went through some personal changes. She lost a lot of weight and wrote two health books, Joan Lunden’s Healthy Cooking (1996) and Joan Lunden’s Healthy Living: A Practical, Inspirational Guide to Creating Balance in Your Life (1997). On a more private note, she and her husband of 13 years announced their separation in February 1997. The divorce eventually turned bitter over Krauss’s request for alimony from Lunden who was making around $2 million a year at the time.
While the news of her divorce may have surprised viewers, they were even more dismayed by the official announcement about her departure from GMA in June 1997. After leaving the show that September, she continued to work in television, creating a new series called Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden. During the show’s run, she explored such places as the gold vaults of the U.S. Treasury and the warehouses of the famed Smithsonian Institution. She also explored personal transitions, change, and opportunity in the book, A Bend in the Road Is Not The End of the Road (1998).
New Directions
In 2000, Lunden married summer camp owner, Jeff Konigsberg, a man roughly a decade her junior. Three years later, the couple welcomed twins, Kate and Max, through a surrogate mother, Deborah Bolig. Using the same surrogate, their family grew to include another set of twins, Jack and Kimberly, in 2003.
Tackling motherhood in her fifties, Lunden answered critics about being an older mother in a Good Housekeeping article. She compared caring for the twins with her experiences with her daughter Sarah who she had at age 37. “Back then, I weighed about 40 pounds more. I didn’t work out regularly. I didn’t eat properly. . . . I honestly feel like I’m in the best shape of my life.”
Continuing with her interest in health and parenting, Lunden authored Growing Up Healthy: Protecting Your Child From Diseases Now Through Adulthood (2004). Back on television, she hosted the reality show Wickedly Perfect in 2005. That same year, Lunden made a cameo appearance in the comedy film Thank You for Smoking. In addition to writing and television work, she is a popular public speaker.
Lunden lives in Connecticut with her second husband and their four children. She has three daughters, Jamie, Lindsay, and Sarah, from her first marriage.
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