About Diane Rehm

In 1973, the 37-year-old Diane began her radio career as a volunteer producer at WAMU, with no prior experience. As the story goes, her first day on the job as a volunteer, Diane Rehm was asked to assist the station manager in the studio when Home Show host Irma Aandahl called in sick. Ten months later, Aandahl hired Diane as an assistant producer.

She became host of WAMU's Kaleidoscope in 1979, and hosted her first session of "open phones" when one of her guests failed to show up. Her question -- "Tell me what you do?" -- generated a tremendous response, and shortly thereafter, in 1984, the show got a new name The Diane Rehm Show. It soon gained a reputation as one of the country's leading regional radio shows, and started attracting authors and celebrities visiting Washington on publicity tours.

When satellite distribution made it possible to take the show to a national audience Diane raised the money to pay for the satellite time and in 1995 the show became part of NPR's "Talk Track" and listeners across the country joined the audience. Three years later, Washingtonian Magazine named her Washingtonian of the year.

In 1998, her career nearly came to a halt because of a mysterious speech problem. She took a leave of absence from the show and saw specialist after specialist until, finally, she was diagnosed and treated for spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder. Not one to be defeated, she returned to the show and made a point of bringing attention to the condition. In 2000 she interviewed President Bill Clinton and became the first radio talk show host to interview a sitting President in the Oval Office.

Today The Diane Rehm Show is distributed nationally and internationally by NPR and NPR Worldwide, and can be heard online (both live and archived audio streams are available) and on Sirius satellite radio. Diane's weekly U.S. audience alone is estimated at 1.4 million and growing.

Diane became a best-selling memoirist with the publication of Finding My Voice (Knopf 1999), and she followed that with a compelling, deeply personal book about marriage, Toward Commitment (Knopf 2002), co-written with her husband, John Rehm.

Diane's keen curiosity means that her topics range from Iraq and the U.S. economy to the art of landscape design and James Joyce's Ulysses. Her guests have included former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, V.S. Naipaul, Toni Morrison, Annie Leibovitz, George Soros and Ted Koppel.

But it's her touch with callers and less well-known guests that has endeared her to her listeners. As Diane says, "It's crucial we hear not only the voices of policymakers and experts, but that everyone has a chance to offer their opinions and ask questions."