Just Jane: Pauley gets personal

NEW YORK -- Jane Pauley. The name has been part of the television landscape for decades.

See Jane with Tom Brokaw on Today .

Now see Jane with Bryant Gumbel.

There's Jane with Stone Phillips on Dateline.

Go, Jane, go.

Pauley's career has been a steady progression through the NBC hallways, a reflection of her steady Midwestern professionalism. Through 32 years in the TV business, the Indiana-born Pauley has prompted monikers such as Saint Jane and Regular Jane; adjectives used to describe her in interviews usually include "pleasant" and "wholesome," along with "focused" and "direct."

She has carved out a name for herself not as the perky or pretty Pauley (although she was the ingenue on Today in 1976) but as a respected news personality. In 1989, she told an interviewer, "Nobody calls me silly. That is not a word that applies to me."

And although she has been high-profile with her 24-year marriage to Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, she otherwise has avoided celebrity. She'll proudly tell you that celeb photographers have gotten a photo of her three children only once, and that was when they ... // 88% Remaining