Producer Katherine “Katy” Textor, who collaborated with Morley Safer on nearly all of his reports over his last years on 60 Minutes, died of cancer Friday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. She was 45 and her death was reported by CBS.
Textor came to CBS News in 2003 from ABC News, where she was a White House producer, political reporter on the Bush-Gore 2000 presidential race and worked for the documentary unit. She began working with Safer at 60 Minutes in 2004.
Textor was remembered by colleagues for her dedication to Safer and his work that helped keep the legendary correspondent on the air until a few weeks before his death. Over a 12-year period with Safer, she produced profiles, features and investigations.
The biggest news-maker among those stories was the much-anticipated first interview with Ruth Madoff in 2011. Nearly 19 million people watched the wife of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff tell Safer she knew nothing about her husband’s long and elaborate multi-billion-dollar fraud. As Textor looked on in the interview, Madoff said she and her husband attempted suicide with medications.
