ShareThisRobin Roberts is pretty sure viewers wait for her flubs.
"People love it when you screw up," opines the 48-year-old Roberts, who is marking her 14th season on ABC's "Good Morning America" in 2009. "We could have the most scripted show, and people are talking about (the mistakes)."
Minutes before this interview, she was on the air and couldn't remember which song Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder sang together ("Ebony and Ivory"). The conversation drifted in and out of "GMA" throughout that morning. Undoubtedly, viewers knowing the answer were talking back to the screen.
Still, this is a reporter who had the first sit-down with President Barack Obama after he was sworn into office. She worked the red carpet at the recent Academy Awards. She's a journalist who is in the middle of just about every major event.
But on this day, she is that woman who didn't know the name of a Stevie Wonder song. The moment makes her laugh.
If Roberts has an ego, it's not evident. When she mentions working the red carpet, she doesn't immediately throw names around. She talks about how she was clumsy and twisted her ankle while wearing an expensive gown and in the presence of some of the world's most famous.
"You can clean me up," she deadpans, "but it's all, 'Gollllly! I'm here on the red carpet.' It was a break from reality."
Raised modestly in rural Mississippi, Roberts is the youngest of four children born to a Tuskegee Airman and his wife.
She attended Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, La., graduating cum laude in 1983 with a degree in communications. She was a standout player on the basketball team.
From college, she worked her way up, from local television stations to national networks ESPN and ABC. Her climb is accented by a quote she made in her first best-selling book "From the Heart: Seven Rules to Live By": "I'm a big believer that you have to put yourself in position for good things to happen to you."
Roberts clings to that thought.
"You can hope, wish and pray all you want to," she says, "but you have to put yourself in position. Proximity is power.
"I'm a vast believer that the majority of us will get a break. But are you ready? Are you going to be prepared? Instead of waiting, do something to prepare for it. ... It means sacrifice."
Roberts says the odds for success weren't in her favor -- despite being dubbed by some as being a "golden one," to whom all things come easily.
"No, I'm not," she says. "I'm a black woman from the Deep South who wanted to be on TV. That wasn't easy. It's never easy for someone who doesn't look like the traditional person on TV."
Even with that, though, she admits not having any "hard-luck stories."
"People weren't harder on me than they would be anyone else," she said. "I never played the race card or the gender (card). I worked my tail off.
"And I still do."
The past two years have been hard for Roberts. She has fought breast cancer (and now has a clean bill of health), her father died and Katrina ravaged her hometown. Instead of bemoaning her losses, she counts her blessings.
"I'm still here. I'm still smiling. I'm still surviving," she says. "I know other people have been through hard times, too.
"I hope I can be a symbol for them that this, too, shall pass."
(E-mail Terry Morrow of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at morrow2(at)knews.com.)
