LOS ANGELES: Barbara Walters, the first woman to break up the all-male club of network television anchors and one of the last remaining megastars in broadcast news who deftly coaxed world leaders and celebrities alike into revealing their secrets and deepest fears, has died, according to ABC News, her longtime employer.

Seemingly indefatigable through her long career, Walters died at the age of 93.

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger, Walters’ former boss, announced on Twitter that Walters died Friday evening at her home in New York.

“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself. She was a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time, from heads of state and leaders of regimes to the biggest celebrities and sports icons,” Iger wrote.

“I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for more than three decades, but more importantly, I was able to call her a dear friend.”

“She will be missed by all of us at the Walt Disney Co., and we send our deepest condolences to her daughter, Jacqueline.”

Walters had undergone heart surgery in 2010.

A canny interviewer who prodded ranks of public figures into tearful confessions, Walters was an aggressive practitioner of “the get” who outmaneuvered competitors to land exclusives with figures as varied as Cuban leader Fidel Castro, actress Katharine Hepburn and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

She made history when she was named the first female co-host of NBC’s “Today” show in 1974 and again two years later when ABC tapped her as the first female co-anchor of the network evening news. Walters faced open hostility from her male counterparts in both places, but never let it rattle her publicly, despite being shadowed by deep insecurities that she said lifted only late in her career.

“I was completely unwelcome,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “They didn’t want a woman, and they didn’t want me.”

Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on September 25, 1929, the youngest daughter of Lou Walters, a vaudeville booker-turned-nightclub impresario who created the famed Latin Quarter club in Times Square, and Dena Seletsky, a clerk in a men’s neckwear store.

Her older sister Jacqueline had a mild mental disability, which was a source of embarrassment and then guilt for Walters throughout her life.

After studying theater at Sarah Lawrence College, Walters worked as a secretary at a New York advertising agency, then got her first television job as a publicist for the local NBC affiliate in New York. Several years later, she was hired as a writer for CBS’ morning show, which was then co-anchored by a young Walter Cronkite and Dick Van Dyke. She made her on-camera debut on that program, replacing a model who failed to show up for a bathing suit segment.

Walters sought to tackle meaty news stories, despite the resentment she encountered from male colleagues. When “Today” host Frank McGee demanded that Walters be limited to “girlie” interviews, she protested. The network president came up with a compromise: McGee could ask the first three questions of newsmakers visiting the studio; Walters, the fourth.

Quietly fuming, Walters sought interviews outside the studio, where McGee had no say, pursuing subjects with handwritten letters. She got an exclusive with US president Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman; interviewed the elusive Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan; and covered Nixon’s historic trip to China as one of only three female reporters in the traveling news corps.

Despite the attention she brought the network with her reporting, NBC refused to name Walters co-host of “Today” until McGee died of bone cancer in 1974. The appointment of the first female network anchor made the cover of Newsweek.

ABC lured Walters away two years later, promising her a then-staggering $5 million over five years - worth $30.2 million in 2022 dollars - to co-anchor the evening news and do prime-time specials. The media were skeptical of her worth, dubbing her the “million-dollar baby.” She encountered an even icier reception from Reasoner, her co-anchor.

News division president Roone Arledge ended the pairing after two years, and Walters survived by fashioning a new role for herself: that of the globe-trotting interviewer. She interviewed Fidel Castro in a patrol boat on the Bay of Pigs and scored a world scoop by landing the first joint interview with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, infuriating competitors such as Cronkite.

At times, her career was filled with escapades out of a James Bond movie: A Panamanian dictator tried to romance her. She secretly passed on a message to President Ronald Reagan from an Iranian arms dealer involved in the Iran-Contra deal, an act that drew a public reprimand from ABC for violating news division standards.

In 1980, she was named co-host of “20/20,” the prime-time newsmagazine ABC had created to challenge “60 Minutes.” Walters used the show as a platform to expand her run of exclusive interviews, fiercely competing for scoops, sometimes even with ABC colleagues.

Walters brought a lighter tone to her prime-time specials, perching on an elephant with James Stewart, riding behind Sylvester Stallone on a motorcycle and getting a lap dance from Hugh Jackman.

In her later years, Walters remade herself as a successful producer of “The View.”

Walters officially retired in 2014, but then quickly announced she was “coming out of retirement” to do a special “20/20” interview with the father of Elliot Rodger, the University of California, Santa Barbara student who killed six people and wounded 14.

She continued to do occasional specials. Her last on-air interview was with then presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015. She was rarely seen in public in recent years.

Walters is survived by her daughter Jacqueline, whom she adopted with her second husband, theatrical producer Lee Guber. They divorced in 1976. Walters’ third marriage, to television producer Merv Adelson, also ended in divorce.

Over the years, she was romantically involved with numerous powerful men, including future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and US senator John Warner of Virginia. In her autobiography, Walters revealed that she carried on a two-year affair in the 1970s with Edward R. Brooke, a married US senator and first Black person elected to that body since Reconstruction.

If she had any regret in her life, Walters told the Los Angeles Times, it was that she never kept a diary.

“I still think, ‘Oh, the things I’ve heard and forgotten!’” she said.