What Katie Said

To all who came in contact with him, Ted Corcoran’s personality had an unique, potent effect: somehow his relaxed demeanor, clear, soothing voice and physical attractiveness made his words resonate as few other’s did. His opinion or advice, when asked for, invariably was taken and proved correct.

From the time he first was told of his impact on others, he never overtly made capital of it since he didn’t give credence to the ‘flattery.’ He attributed his exceptional personal and business success during his journey, beginning in 1975, from Albany, New York to Columbia College in Manhattan to his first real job in Los Angeles, to his genes - remarkable parents - and luck.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate, his scholarship didn’t cover his expenses during and after college in Law School; working nights, he quickly rose from bus-boy to head waiter in a four-star French restaurant, thus able to share the riches of the town with friends and his first significant lover.

Gary Cowell, a patron of the restaurant, spotted Ted’s special qualities and offered him a high-paying job as his aide in his Los Angeles Public Relation company. Its clientele were corporate execs, studio heads and some celebrities, all of whom wanted little, yet specialized, publicity. Ted’s duties were amorphous. “Just being” with Gary at meetings paid off for his boss, whether with his old friend, Orson Welles, or a new client, a Wyoming oil and gas magnate, Mitch Ramsey, who soon became their most lucrative account.

Ted fell in love with, married Moira Connelly and they bore Katie within his first years in L.A., during which time and for decades after he sought and expected his true calling to come to him. PR certainly wasn’t his destiny. He also knew he wasn’t built for political life, despite varying degrees of pressure, over the years, from Mitch, Warren Buffett, the Clintons, Obama and others who were drawn to his persona.

WHAT KATIE SAID to her father on her twenty-seventh birthday shattered him as nothing ever had. Her words cut deeply. Was she right about him? Should and could he correct his course?