Gretchen Elizabeth Carlson (born June 21, 1966) is an American television commentator and author. She was crowned the 1989 Miss America while representing her native state of Minnesota. She continues to work with the Miss America Pageant and has served as a national celebrity spokesperson for March of Dimes. Carlson graduated from Stanford University before embarking on a career in television. Gaining experience as anchor and reporter for several local network affiliates, she joined CBS News as a correspondent in 2000 and became the co-host of the Saturday Early Show. In 2005, Carlson moved to Fox News Channel and became the co-host of the morning show Fox & Friends along with Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. In 2013, she announced her departure from Fox & Friends and soon thereafter launched a new program called The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson. Her contract with Fox News expired on June 23, 2016. On July 6, she filed a lawsuit against Fox News CEO Roger Ailes claiming sesual harassment.
On October 4, 1997, Carlson married sports agent Casey Close. They live in Greenwich, Connecticut with their two children.[22][4] She announced on Fox & Friends on June 9, 2009 (also repeated on Glenn Beck's Fox News program), that her parents' car dealership had been selected for closing as part of the General Motors reorganization and bankruptcy on June 1, 2009. A year later the Star Tribune reported that "It took an act of Congress, a national TV appeal and maybe a little bit of history on the owners' side, but Main Motor, the Anoka car dealership that Lee and Karen Carlson's family has owned for 91 years, will keep its General Motors dealership after all."
On Fox & Friends, during a January 10, 2007, interview with Dan Bartlett, counselor to then-president George W. Bush, Carlson labeled Democratic U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy a "hostile enemy" of the United States, "right here on the home front." Bartlett replied, "Well, we don't view Ted Kennedy as a hostile enemy. We do view him to be an open and often critic of the war. He has been from the very outset. I don't think that's anything new." Keith Olbermann chose her as that day's "Worst Person in the World" on that night's broadcast of his show Countdown, while Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post called it "the Fox News exchange of the day" and asked, "Doesn't the Constitution allow for dissent?
