The veteran journalist shared the details while sitting down with Bill Maher for his 'Club Random' podcast.
Katie Couric is recalling the "endless s**t" her former Today show co-anchor, Bryant Gumbel, allegedly gave her when she went on maternity leave to have her first child.
The veteran news journalist appeared on a recent episode of Bill Maher's Club Random podcast, where they reminisced about when Maher first appeared on the Today show back in the mid-1980s. Maher's memory on the momentous occasion was a bit fuzzy, but he recalled Gumbel visiting him in his dingy West Hollywood apartment for a segment on "rising stars."
And it was while talking about Gumbel when Couric recalled her co-anchor's "sexist attitude" about her going on maternity leave while pregnant with her first daughter, Ellie, whom she welcomed with her late husband, Jay Monahan, in 1991.
"He got mad at me because I was doing something on maternity leave and he was giving me endless s**t for taking, like, a month or two off. I was having my first baby," Couric shared, to which Maher responded by saying, "Yeah, I could see that."
Couric, 67, then gave an example of what Gumbel had once shared with her. She was quick to note he was kidding, but the attitude, she said, was "emblematic" of what women dealt with in the workplace in the early 1990s.
"And he was, like, 'Why don't you just, like, drop it in the field and come back to work right away, or something," Couric said. "I mean, it was really ... no he was kidding, but he was goofing on me but giving me a lot of s**t, but it was emblematic of sort of an incredibly sexist attitude."
ET has reached out to Gumbel for comment.
The conversation triggered Maher to bring up Matt Lauer, who in 2017 was fired from the Today show for inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace. Lauer's workplace indiscretions coupled with Gumbel's attitude on maternity leave prompted Maher to say it was "a tradition of an old boys network."
Couric agreed, adding that "it was a very different environment. Lots of fraternization -- a polite way of saying inneroffice shuping."
Gumbel, who recently completed a 29-season run of his HBO Sports show, Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, was the third-longest-serving co-host of the Today show after Lauer and Couric. He left in January 1997 after a 15-year run at the desk.
Couric also had a 15-year run at the Today show (she became a permanent co-anchor in 1991and left in 2006) before becoming the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, which she helmed from 2006 to 2011 before joining ABC News and launching her own daytime TV show, Katie.
In October 2021, Couric released her tell-all memoir, Going There, in which she detailed her time at NBC.
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