As Today's news anchor, Curry has become one of television's favorite morning pick-me-ups since she joined the top-rated show in March 1997. She filled in for Katie Couric in January after Couric's husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer and this week subs for Lauer, who is rumored to be marrying model Annette Roque. But her moonlighting is sometimes equally rewarding. Last November, as a correspondent for Dateline NBC, Curry landed the first interview with Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey, parents of the Iowa septuplets.
She was a natural choice for the McCaughey story. A dedicated wife and mother, she returns from work at 2:30 p.m. to the two-bedroom New York City apartment she shares with her husband, Brian Ross, 42—a computer consultant whom she met in college and married in 1989—and their two kids, daughter McKenzie, 5, and son Walker, 3. "I was never organized before having children, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be as good at my job," says Curry, 41, of motherhood's time-juggling demands. "You start making dinner and can't finish, because someone has fallen down in the next room and they need a kiss on their toe or a hug and a pat."
Curry inherited her nurturing skills from her own parents. Her father, Bob Curry, a native Coloradan, was a U.S. Naval officer stationed in Japan in the late '40s when he met her mother, Hiroe Nagase, daughter of a rice farmer. They fell in love and married in 1953. "His commanding officer told him, 'Your eyes are going to slant and you're going to turn into a bamboo American,'" says Curry. "It took great courage to stay with their love despite those pressures."
In 1956, while Bob was stationed on Guam, Hiroe, now 69, gave birth to Ann, the first of five children. The family moved from state to state, finally settling in Ashland, Ore., where Bob and Hiroe still live. "I treated the kids like the military," says the elder Curry, 69. "I'd line them up and give them work assignments, until Ann finally said, 'Hey, Dad! We're of the military, but we're not in it!'"
The instilled toughness paid off, though, when a third-grade classmate called Curry a "Jap." Little Ann punched him in the mouth, loosening his front teeth. "The teacher hauled him by the ear to the principal's office," recalls Curry. "He was the one that got in trouble. It felt so good to hit him."
She earned her journalism degree in 1978 after working her way through the University of Oregon. "At one point," says Curry, "I was a hotel maid scrubbing bathrooms." Curry went on to land a TV job in Medford, Ore., where she received a crash course in sexism. "The executive producer said, 'You're a woman. You can't carry the camera. If you were smart you wouldn't take this job.'" She stayed anyway and, after three years there and three more at another station in Portland, moved to KCBS in Los Angeles. Once, in the course of her work, she was chased by a homeless man with a knife (she outran him). "I put myself in all kinds of peril," she says, "because I was going to do my best and not let fear get in my way."
In 1990, NBC News at Sunrise hired Curry, and she relocated to New York City. Seven years later she made the move to Today. Her eventual ambition? Not what you'd expect. "I was always such a good girl," she says of her youth. "I was a boring Goody Two-shoes. I hope to have a wild old age!" Just remember: She hits.
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