Anderson Cooper is an award-winning American journalist, news anchor, author and television personality. Nicknamed the “presenter of the future” for his compassionate reporting style, he has covered wars and hurricanes, royal family weddings and presidential elections, but his own name has also made headlines as a result of some spectacular family drama. .
What is Anderson Cooper’s net worth?
As a news anchor at CNN, Anderson Cooper’s salary is $12 million. But it has been estimated that his net worth is much, much higher; at one point he was projected to be worth over $200 million due to his lineage as the great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Other sources, such as Celebrity Net Worth, have estimated the broadcaster’s wealth at a modest $50 million.
A Brief History of Anderson Cooper’s Vanderbilt Lineage
In the early 19th century, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt amassed an empire of wealth through his shipping businesses. He left school at 16, borrowed money to buy a steamboat, The Swiftsureand started its own ferry line between Staten Island and Manhattan.
Instantly successful, he added itineraries along the East Coast and later expanded operations by purchasing ocean-going steamships and establishing an innovative route from New York to San Francisco. His ships sailed through Nicaragua instead of around Cape Horn in South America, saving weeks of time and generating millions for the Vanderbilt family.
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Known as a shrewd businessman, Vanderbilt pursued tariff cuts and other aggressive business practices to erect barriers to entry for his shipping competitors. Vanderbilt took advantage of the New England textile boom by purchasing railroad lines to transport via his steamships to customers around the world, and his wealth grew even more. Over time, he controlled more than 40% of the country’s railroad lines through his consolidated business, The New York Central Railroad. After his death in 1877, Vanderbilt’s fortune, adjusted for inflation, amounted to a staggering $185 billion.
In his book, “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty,” Cooper says the Vanderbilt family’s wealth had nearly evaporated by the time he was born. “My mom made it clear to me that there is no trust fund,” he said. Cornelius’s son William had effectively doubled the family fortune by increasing his railway interests.
After his death in 1887, subsequent generations squandered the fortune on a lavish Gilded Age lifestyle. This included elegant yachts, stables of thoroughbred horses, an art collection of Old Master paintings, and the construction of multiple mansions, including Biltmore, the 250-room estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
The family’s philanthropic efforts to establish Vanderbilt University and other projects throughout New York City also diminished their wealth. At the same time, the transportation supply chain experienced seismic changes during World War II and the advent of the commercial trucking and aircraft industries. By 1954, the Vanderbilt family had sold the remaining shares of the New York Central Railroad; The company declared bankruptcy in 1971.
How did Anderson Cooper make his money?
Most of Cooper’s current wealth is attributed to his professional endeavors as host of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” He is a “60 Minutes” correspondent, documentary host and author of four best-selling books, “Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival”; “The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son Talk About Life, Love, and Loss” (co-authored with his mother, Gloria); “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty”; and “Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune.”
Cooper also inherited $1.5 million after his mother’s death in 2019.
Cooper’s early life, education, and career
Born June 3, 1967, Cooper grew up in New York City. He attended prestigious private schools before graduating with a degree in political science from Yale University and spending two summers interning for the CIA. Surprisingly, his storied career in broadcast journalism began as a fact checker for Channel One, a daily news program focused on high school.
Cooper persuaded his bosses at Channel One to send him to war-torn parts of the world, such as Myanmar (formerly Burma), where he used a handheld digital camera to personally report on the atrocities he observed. He created a fake press pass to get into the front lines and would later cover stories in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda.
Cooper’s dispatches caught the attention of ABC News, where he became a correspondent in 1995. He was known for his affectionate demeanor and model-like good looks, and quickly earned the nickname “the silver fox” for graying prematurely, a condition he attributed to poor diet and strenuous exercise while on the Yale team.
He has received dozens of Emmy, National Headliner and Peabody Awards for Journalism and was even named to the Haitian government’s National Order of Honor and Merit for his coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
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Who is Anderson Cooper’s mother?
Anderson Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, an artist, fashion designer and socialite. Known as America’s “poor rich girl,” she was the center of a high-profile child custody battle during the Great Depression between her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, over her five million dollar trust fund.
The details of the family’s lifestyle were considered so scandalous that during the trial, the judge ushered everyone out of the courtroom to hear young Gloria’s testimony. Custody fell to Gertrude, who raised the child in her Long Island mansion, surrounded by her cousins.
When she came of age, Gloria completely excluded her mother from her trust fund. Her life was dramatized in books and on television; Gloria herself worked as a model, actress, artist and fashion designer, launching a popular line of denim, dresses, shirts and shoes in the 1970s, as well as an eponymous fragrance.
Cooper was the youngest son of Gloria’s marriage to her fourth husband, screenwriter Wyatt Emory Cooper. His older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, struggled with depression, and in 1988, at age 23, he plunged to his death from the family’s 14th-floor Upper East Side penthouse. His mother witnessed the tragedy.
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Cooper has said that losing his brother and father (who suffered a heart attack when he was just 10) helped him understand “the language of loss” that would eventually shape his career in journalism.
Cooper has described his relationship with his mother as “unique”; The two were exceptionally close, talking all the time and even giving each other relationship advice. They co-wrote the book “The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son Talk About Life, Love, and Loss,” a reflection on Carter’s passing, and were also the subjects of the 2016 HBO documentary “Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt “. and Anderson Cooper.”
Gloria was diagnosed with stomach cancer in May 2019 and died less than a month later; During that time, Cooper confided in him that she wanted to start a family. He decided that if the child was a boy, she would name him after her father, and if she was a girl, she would be called Gloria.
Their son, Wyatt Morgan Maisani-Cooper, was born via surrogate in April 2020. Cooper’s second child, Sebastian Luke Cooper, was also born via surrogate in February 2022.
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Is Anderson Cooper gay?
Cooper identifies as gay, saying, “The fact is, I’m gay, I always have been, and I couldn’t be happier, comfortable in my skin, and proud.” He admitted that when he went on dates with girls as a teenager, he secretly hoped to talk to her siblings and revealed it publicly after college.
“I think being gay is one of the blessings of my life,” he said, “and it made me a better person, it made me a better reporter.”
From 2004 to 2009, Cooper dated César Recio, a Dominican businessman; From 2009 to 2018 she was in a relationship with Benjamin Maisani, former librarian at the Morgan Library and owner of three Gotham City bars: Eastern Bloc, Atlas Social Club, and Bedlam Bar & Lounge.
Cooper has received numerous honors from the LGBTQIA community, including the GLAAD Media Award, and was the first openly gay moderator of a presidential debate, between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, in 2016.
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Is Anderson Cooper married?
Cooper has never been married. Along with Maisani, whom he calls “my best friend,” he is the father of his two children; Maisani adopted Wyatt and is in the process of adopting Sebastian.
“I’ve always believed that if you’ve been with someone and it ends, in terms of an intimate relationship, if you love someone, there’s no reason why that love shouldn’t continue,” Cooper said.
What are some of the most popular Anderson Cooper stories?
Anderson gained national recognition for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In a more recent and particularly popular episode of “60 Minutes,” Cooper investigates why the friendship feature helped wolves evolve into dogs—and what lessons people can learn from them.
