The former producer of The Early Show, 48 Hours, and CBS This Morning, Andy Cohen—host the Bravo series Watch What Happens Live—appears on an episode of Finding Your Roots called “Against All the Odds.” The prolific producer learns from the show’s host, Henry Louis Gates Jr., that both his father and mother descended from Jewish peddlers in the Russian Empire. “I come from a long line of people who were trying to make a living, provide for their families, and make life better,” muses Cohen. While the paper trail ended abruptly for Gates’s team of genealogists on one of Cohen’s lines, they successfully traced one of his bloodlines back to the late 1700s.
Also featured is award-winning journalist Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio. Not unlike Cohen, her Jewish roots were in the Russian Empire. The daughter of the celebrated violinist Roman Totenberg, she was familiar with the story of her paternal grandmother’s escape from France after it fell to the Nazis. “She was my beloved grandmother…I still feel this great attachment for her.” However, the journalist had a different relationship with her maternal grandmother. “I was not close to her…She did not share much of herself.” From Gates, Totenberg learns new insights into one of her grandmother’s long-held secrets. “I say congratulations to my grandmother; there’s more there than a child could appreciate.”
“Against All Odds” premieres Tues., January 26 at 7 p.m. (ET) on PBS.
Photo: Courtesy of McGee Media