Here's The Truth About Lesley Stahl

We know her as the host of 60 Minutes, and as one of the country's best-known and most experienced journalists. Lesley Stahl made waves again in October 2020 for a high-profile interview with President Donald Trump, a meeting that saw the nation's chief executive get up and walk out after protesting the journalist's line of questioning. The president shouldn't have been surprised — after all, she had interviewed him three times before. Once, when he was named Republican nominee; the second time, during his first TV sit-down interview as president-elect, and then, a one-on-one after his second year in office. So he likely would have known what to expect. Stahl is probably one of the most decorated journalists of her time. She's won a number of Emmys for her special reports, including one on the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison facilities and another on China's real estate bubble. She's also won an Edward R. Murrow award for feature reporting and an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for a special report on the effects of the UN sanctions against Iraq on the country's children. Plus, there is another side to Lesley Stahl — the side of her that her family sees, in her role as a wife, mother, and grandmother. Leslie Stahl is married to screenwriter and journalist Aaron Latham, and her powers of observation must have helped her notice that things weren't quite right with her husband. In 2018, she told Brain & Life that she'd noticed changes in the way Latham was walking during a trip they took 11 years prior. Stahl recalled, "I'm a very slow walker, and his pace was slower than mine. We were on a trip with our daughter and her boyfriend, and she kept saying, 'What's wrong with Dad?'" Latham was subsequently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and Stahl has been supporting him ever since. She used the research skills that she had honed as a journalist to track down under-reported and innovative ways for Latham to cope with the disease, including boxing, which Stahl says her husband enjoys. She said, "From the very beginning, boxing had a dramatic, positive effect on Aaron. It not only helped Aaron physically, but it did a lot for his confidence. He goes religiously, twice a week." The disease hasn't put her husband out of commission, either. According to her, quote, "He's semi-retired, but he continues to write; it just takes longer now." The veteran journalist has a daughter and two granddaughters — and it is thanks to them that Stahl says she found new meaning in life. In an excerpt published by Brightly, Stahl writes: "Becoming a gran exhilarated me with a new purpose. The change was so big and granular and unexpected, I wanted to understand it. So I took out my reporter's notepad and a tape recorder and set off on a journey, a quest, to find out what was happening to me. Does it happen this way to all grandmothers?" The result is her book, Becoming Grandma: The Joys and Science of the New Grandparenting. The book chronicles her quest to discover what it meant to be a gran — or in her words an "LOL," which in this case stands for "little old lady." She says writing the book helped her define what it meant to be in a public position of influence and to be a grandmother at the same time. Despite being known in public as a poised and prepared journalist, she was still surprised by the changes that came up when her grandkids came into her life. Speaking on CBS News in 2016, she broke down some of the things that surprised her the most. She wrote, "As I explored the subject, I looked into the biochemistry of grandmothers, the history, and the economics. [...] One thing I found out early is that most grans are besotted. Just when you think your days of falling madly in love are long past, you look down at that baby and find yourself in a rapture, going limp. Having grandchildren is why they say old people are happier than young people. And why, as my father-in-law used to say, this is a pretty ol' world." Watch the video to learn The Truth About Lesley Stahl! #LesleyStahl