Anderson Cooper Profile
Anderson Cooper is an award-winning American Anchor and political commentator who is well-known for working for CNN News as a host of the broadcast show, “Anderson Cooper 360°”. Other than working as an anchor he also serves as a correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS News. He has been working with this station since 2001.
Anderson Cooper Wiki
Full Name: Anderson Cooper
Profession: American
Nationality: Anchor and Political Commentator
Education: The Dalton School and Yale University
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: June 3, 1967
Age / How Old is Anderson Cooper?: 57 years old as of 2024
Place of Birth: New York, New York
Country: United States Of America
Height / How tall is Anderson Cooper?: 5 feet 10 inches (1.77 m)
Parents: Wyatt Emory Cooper(Father) and Gloria Vanderbilt(Mother)
Husband: Not Available
Children: 2
Salary: $12 million
Net Worth: $200 Million
Anderson Cooper Personal Life, Family, and Parents
Cooper was born Anderson Hays Cooper on June 3, 1967, in New York, New York, United States (he is 57 years old as of 2024.) He celebrates his birthday on the 3rd of June every year. Cooper stands at an average height of 5 feet 10 inches (1.77 m) tall.
Cooper is from a wealthy family called “Vanderbilt”, where he is the younger son of writer and actor Wyatt Emory Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt. At the age of 10 years, his dad passed on at the age of 50 years in January 1978 while undergoing heart surgery. Cooper is the grandson of Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and socialite Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt who were millionaires equestrians. Cooper’s great-grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt was a business magnate, in addition to that he was the founder of the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune. Furthermore, he is the great-grandson son of Civil War brevet Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick.
Cooper had an older brother called Carter Vanderbilt Cooper and other two older half-brothers. The two half brothers of Anderson were from his mother’s side namely; Leopold Stanislaus “stan” Stokowski and Christopher Stokowski. Stan was born in in1950 and Christopher was born in 1952. On July 22, 1988, his older brother Carter committed suicide at the age of 23 years. He jumped from the 14th-floor terrace of Vanderbilt’s New York City penthouse apartment. Later on, her mother wrote a story of his son’s death in the book “A Mother’s Story”. She briefly explains that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode, induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma prescription drug salbutamol. Anderson’s interest in journalism was sparked by his brother’s suicidal case.
Anderson Cooper Spouse/Gay/Partner
Cooper is openly gay. He came out officially in July of 2012 in an open letter that he had written to his longtime friend, journalist Andrew Sullivan. He first met with his partner Benjamin Maisani in the year 2009, and they both began dating in 2015 which was later on accompanied by a series of red-carpet appearances. Unfortunately, the couple broke up after three years of much speculation, despite Cooper stating that the split up was meant to be romantic and that their love would still last. After the duo’s breakup, the two still remain to be best friends and also co-parents of their two children. The two dated for 10 years but unfortunately broke up in the year 2018.
Anderson Cooper Kids/Baby
Cooper has two cute sons. Sebastian Luke Maisani-Cooper who is his younger son was born on February 10, 2022. His firstborn Wyatt Morgan Cooper was born on April 27th, 2020 by a surrogate mother and Cooper announced the birth of his son on April 30, 2020. In addition to that, he also went on to make an announcement, saying that “Wyatt Morgan Cooper” was born on Monday weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces.
Anderson Cooper Education
Cooper went to Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Later, he joined Yale University as a resident of Trumbull College in the year 1989 where he graduated with a degree in Bachelor of Arts in political science. He spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency. While in college he pursued his journalism career even without a journalistic formal education. Later on, he joined Vietnam National University in Hanoi to study the Vietnamese language.
Anderson Cooper Salary and Net Worth
Being one of the top journalists for CBS, Cooper earns an annual salary of $12 million. Cooper has an estimated net worth of $200 Million which he has earned through his successful career as a journalist.
Anderson Cooper Career
Cooper’s media experience began when he was young. Diane Arbus for Harper’s Bazaar photographed him. On the 17th of September 1970, Cooper was a guest on the Tonight Show at that time he was 3 years old appearing with his mother. At the age of 9 years, he also appeared on, To Tell the Truth as an impostor. He modeled with Ford models for Macy’s, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren.
Anderson Cooper Channel One
Cooper spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency while studying political science. He pursued journalism with no formal journalistic education. Since he was in utero he became a self-proclaimed ” news junkie”. After graduating from Yale, he tried to gain entry-level employment with ABC answering telephones but it was unsuccessful.
Due to the struggle of getting his foot in the door of on-air reporting, he decided to seek help from a friend in making a fake press pass. At this moment Cooper was working as a fact checker for the small news agency Channel One, which was broadcast to many junior high and high schools in the United States that produces a youth-oriented news program.
Cooper forged his press pass to enter Myanmar where he met students fighting the Burmese government and he was able to sell his homemade news segments to channel one. After reporting from Myanmar for one year, he left for Vietnam for a year to study the Vietnamese language.
Later on, Cooper began filming and assembling reports of Vietnamese life and culture that were aired on channel one after being allowed to bring a Hi8 camera along with him. He returned to film stories from a variety of war-torn around the globe including Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia, in the year 1992. In 1994 Cooper realized that he had become slowly desensitized to the violence he was witnessing around him; the horrors of the Rwandan genocide became trivial. This after being on such assignments for a couple of years.
Anderson Cooper ABC
Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News, in the year 1995. His hard work made him achieve the position of co-anchor on 21ST of September, 1999 for the overnight World News Now program. Unfortunately, he changed his career path in the year 2000, taking a job as the host of ABC’s reality show ” The Mole”. He was also on live with Kelly and Regis as a fill-in co-host for Regis Philbin in 2007 because Philbin underwent a triple-bypass heart surgery. In addition to that, he was still working as a guest co-host on the show when one of the two hosts would not go to work as of the year 2019.
Anderson Cooper CNN
Cooper joined CNN in 2001, after leaving the reality show he was hosting “The Mole” on its second season saying that was enough for him. At CNN he took the role of anchor on American Morning alongside Paul Zahn. Later on, he became CNN’s weekend prime-time anchor in 2002. Cooper has hosted CNN’s New Eve special from Times Square since 2002.
Anderson Cooper 360°/Podcast
Cooper became the anchor of Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN on 8th September 2003 for his philosophy as an anchor. Cooper also covered a couple of important stories, including the death of Pope John Paul II; the tsunami damage in Sri Lanka; the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, and the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon. He also covered the Niger famine from Maradi in August 2005.
During the CNN coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he had a confrontation with Sen. Mary Landrieu, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Sen. Trent Lott about their uptake of the government response. As Cooper had said in a New York magazine interview “I would prefer not to get upset, and not to be emotional when one is surrounded by brave people who are suffering and in need”.
His arrangement was made permanent the same month by the president of CNN’s U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper “the anchorperson of the future”.
The format of CNN’s Newsnight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes in September 2005 to cover the unusually violent hurricane season. Furthermore, Cooper was temporarily chosen as a co-anchor to Aaron Brown to help distribute some of the increased workloads. It was later reported that the arrangement had been made permanent, by Jonathan Klein the president of CNN’s U.S. operations the same month. In addition to that Klein announced that Cooper’s 360° program would be expanded to two hours and shifted into the 100:00pm slot formerly held by Newsnight on 2nd November 2005. Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN in the year 2007 that he would be allowed to go on as a contributor to 60 Minutes and double his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million.
Anderson Cooper CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute
In the same year, in 2007 Cooper was hosting An All-Star Tribute show, on CNN that was mainly for recognizing and honoring extraordinary deeds by ordinary people.
Anderson Cooper Awards
Throughout his career, Cooper has won two Peabody Awards, as well as an Edward Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club in 2011, and two Peabody Awards. He also received awards from the LGBT rights organization “GLAAD” for coming out as the first openly LGBT person to moderate a presidential debate in 2016.
What happened to Anderson Cooper CNN?/Is Anderson Cooper still on CNN news?
Cooper still works for CNN where he serves the station as a host of the broadcast show, “Anderson Cooper 360°”. He also works for the 60-minute show on CBS News where he serves as a correspondent. We will update this information once he announces any plans to leave the station.
Anderson Cooper Books
Other than being a journalist, Cooper is also an author, who has written 5 books as of 2023. These books are;
- Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
- The World of Gloria Vanderbilt
- Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival
- Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
Anderson Cooper CBS News
At CBS News Cooper works alongside;
- Jeffrey Pegues
- Jamie Yuccas
- Susan Zirinsky
- Mireya Villarreal
- Bill Whitaker
- Holly Williams
- Omar Villafranca
- Peter Van Sant
- Imtiaz Tyab
- Jonathan Vigliotti
- Tracy Smith
- Susan Spencer
- Bob Schieffer
- Serena Altschul
Anderson Cooper’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
He is vocal on his social media accounts where he posts frequently. On his Twitter account, he has 9.5M followers, 980K followers on his Facebook page, and 4.1M followers on his Instagram account.