Diane Rehm

Diane Rehm is a native Washingtonian who began her radio career in 1973 as a volunteer for WAMU 88.5, the NPR member station in Washington, D.C. She was hired as an assistant producer and later became the host and producer of two health-oriented programs. In 1979, she began hosting WAMU’s local morning talk show, Kaleidoscope, which was renamed The Diane Rehm Show in 1984.

The Diane Rehm Show has grown from a local program to one with international reach and a weekly on-air audience of more than 2.4 million. A growing number of listeners also catch the program on its website, drshow.org, or via podcast. Video of the show’s Friday Domestic News Hour is available online, as are video spots with special guests.

In 2014, President Barack Obama presented Rehm with the National Humanities Medal. “In probing interviews with everyone from pundits to poets to Presidents, Ms. Rehm’s keen insights and boundless curiosity have deepened our understanding of our culture and ourselves,” the White House said.

In 2010, Diane Rehm won a Personal Peabody Award, considered among the most prestigious and selective prizes in electronic media, for her more than 30 years in public broadcasting. Rehm has been also named “Washingtonian of the Year,” and one of the “150 Most Influential People in Washington” by Washingtonian magazine. She’s been included several times on the magazine’s list of the “100 Most Powerful Women,” most recently in 2013. The daughter of Arab immigrants who settled in Washington in the early 20th century, Rehm was selected as Arab American of the Year by ACCESS in 2013 in celebration of her rich heritage.

In 1998, Rehm’s career nearly ended because of spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological voice disorder that causes strained, difficult speech. Rehm sought treatment, returned to the show, and called attention to the condition. The National Council on Communicative Disorders recognized her work with a Communication Award, and ABC’s Nightline devoted an entire program to a conversation with Rehm about her disorder. In 2011, Rehm was awarded the Voice Education Research Awareness (VERA) Award from The Voice Foundation for her sustained contributions to the field of voice communication.

Rehm is the author of three best-selling autobiographical books: Finding My Voice (Knopf, 1999), in which she describes her childhood, marriage, career, and voice disorder; Toward Commitment: A Dialogue about Marriage (Knopf, 2002), a deeply personal book co-authored with her husband, John; and her most recent book, Life With Maxie (Gibbs Smith, 2010), a lighthearted story about her dog. She is currently writing a fourth book, On My Own, published by Knopf in 2015.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her long-haired Chihuahua, Maxie (short for Maximillian). She was married to her beloved late husband, John, for 54 years. She has two children and four grandchildren.