[Update: Elizabeth Vargas has left ABC Network.]

Elizabeth Vargas is a news anchor and journalist working for ABC. She has been in the business for over 20 years now and has covered many sensitive topics as the co-host of the news-magazine show 20/20 and World News Tonight.

Elizabeth Vargas early life bio

Elizabeth Vargas was born in Paterson, New Jersey on September 6, 1962. She was born to a Puerto Rican father Rafael “Ralf” Vargas, a colonel in the US Army, and to an Irish-American mother, Anne Vargas. In the days of her youth, she traveled post to post with her father in Germany and Belgium.

Elizabeth Vargas in a colorful dress and wearing a neck less in her neck.

She later joined University of Missouri in Columbia with journalism as her major. She attended MU from 1980 to 1984. There she served as a student reporter at KOMU and later as a student editor for KBIA radio. She was exposed to different cultures from a young age which helped her cover culturally sensitive matters.

Elizabeth Vargas’ television career, book, and awards

Following graduation, Vargas worked as an anchor for KTVN-TV, a CBS affiliate, in Reno, Nevada. Then in 1986 she became the lead reporter for KTVK-TV, another CBS affiliate located in Phoenix, Arizona. She worked there for three years.

In 1989 she joined WBBM-TV, a station owned by CBS in Chicago, Illinois. She was with them for four years until 1993 when she joined NBC news. She was a correspondent for Dateline NBC and sub anchor for Today. She also became the new reader for the news-magazine show Good Morning America. 

Elizabeth Vargas reporting the news with a logo of 20/20 on the back

She was promoted to the position of correspondent for Primetime, a new magazine show, and as the anchor for World News Tonight Saturday in 1997. In 2004 she became the co-anchor of the show 20/20, a news-magazine show that talks about national issues.

She and co-host Charles Gibson hosted the World News Tonight in 2005 after Peter Jennings passed away due to cancer. She later took a break from work in 2006 as she was pregnant with her second son Samuel. She returned as the co-anchor of 20/20 and the host of ABC News Specials in late 2006.

Vargas has written a book about her struggles of being addicted to alcohol with the title Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction.

She has won many awards for her work including Outstanding Host in a National Information Program (2001), Special Classification for Outstanding News and Documentary (2000) and Outstanding Instant Coverage of a News Story (2002).

Elizabeth Vargas and her husband Marc Cohn divorced after 12 years of marriage

Elizabeth Vargas (left) and ex-husband Marc Cohn( right) pose together for a picture. Marc is holding Elizabeth with one hand.

Vargas was married to the famous singer and songwriter Marc Cohn for twelve years. They met through a mutual friend Andre Agassi and got married in 2002 after dating for 3 years. They had two children together before separating. Vargas had just announced her recovery from alcoholism when her singer husband filed for divorce in 2014.