In New Book, Connie Chung is Taking on an Important Story: Her Own (Exclusive)

Chung’s new memoir, ‘Connie,’ out now, details her journalism career, her marriage to Maury Povich and what it means to be a trailblazer

As she approached the daunting task of writing her memoir, journalist and news anchor Connie Chung knew what would help her to get the job done.

“What I needed was a deadline,” Chung, 78, tells PEOPLE. “We reporters live and die by deadlines. And soon as I got a publisher, then I knew I had to put the pedal to the metal and really get going.”

Connie, out Sept. 17 from Grand Central Publishing, has been a long time in the making, its author says. Covering her expansive career in television news as the first Asian American and second woman to co-anchor a national evening newscast, the book delves into her role as a trailblazer, as well as her life beyond the cameras.

Chung, the youngest of 10 children, five of whom died in infancy, grew up in Washington, D.C., where her family immigrated to from China in 1945. Her father was a former spy in the intelligence division of the Chiang Kai-shek government prior to the communist takeover, and was a “news junkie,” Chung says. Growing up in the nation's capital also led to her fascination with the media industry. Chung was a fervent reader of The Washington Post and always curious about what was really happening behind the city’s closed doors.

“I really felt this was where I wanted to be: a gumshoe reporter, an old-fashioned one who could run down the marble staircase at the Capitol, and try and find out secrets that people were holding from us,” she says. As a shy child, Chung's decision to start a career in journalism surprised her family, but after graduating from the University of Maryland in 1969, she landed her first job at local news station WTTG-TV Channel 5.

Related: Connie Chung Reveals She Was Sexually Assaulted by Doctor — the Same Physician Who Delivered Her

“A lot of it is chance, and actually luck, that something triggers a person to take one particular path,” she says. “But I believe that anything that happened in my career was meant to be.”

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Throughout her decades-long career, Chung would go on to co-anchor at major news platforms like ABC, CBS and NBC. As a reporter, she covered presidential campaigns and the Watergate scandal, and as host for her own news shows, including Face to Face with Connie Chung, she landed sought-after exclusive interviews, like actor Marlon Brando (“I was just shocked at how he did not respect his own profession”) and former NBA player Magic Johnson, in the wake of his 1991 HIV diagnosis.

Chung was often one of few — if not the only — woman and Asian-American in these rooms, which she says she was constantly having to balance with her work.

“I was bold and brassy in my job and was trying to be just like the men who were sure of themselves, and confident, and walked into a room and owned it and had respect just by virtue of being a man,” she says. “And yet at home, I was this dutiful little Chinese daughter who really obeyed my parents.” And though Chung says that she often wanted to be “one of the guys" like her colleagues, speaking up didn't always feel like a viable option.

“I was never a feminist in that era of feminism because we couldn't go there,” Chung says. “If we did, I think the women [in the newsroom] might've been ostracized.”

Chung also writes of the difficulty of balancing work with her personal life. After experiencing multiple miscarriages, a pivotal moment came for her in 1995. That year, Chung was let go from her job at CBS Evening News, right as she and husband, journalist and television host Maury Povich, adopted their son, Matthew.

Related: Maury Povich and Connie Chung Share the Secret to Their 42-Year Love Story

“I did it backwards, but it turned out perfectly for me,” she says. “First, I forgot to get married, then I forgot to have a baby. And so, I ended up having a career — a long, thriving career. And then, I have had a long, thriving period to raise my son."

One of her biggest supporters today is Povich, who Chung has been married to since 1984. The two first met while working at WTTG-TV Channel 5, where Povich was a co-anchor and Chung was a copy girl, but it wasn't until years later that they began a long-distance relationship before they wed.

“He has a wider vocabulary, I assure you, than ‘You are the father’ or ‘You are not the father,” Chung jokes of the Maury host. “He's a voracious reader and he is a very solid journalist … he takes his work seriously, but he always told me, don't take yourself so seriously … I think that's how we stayed grounded.” But despite that bond, Chung does admit that they still have differing opinions too.

“If we're having a fight at night, he wants to make up before we go to sleep. But when I wake up in the morning, I want to keep fighting. I'm not finished,” she says. “I think that's the way a lot of women are, anyway. You got to get it out.”

Related: Connie Chung on the 'Embarrassing' Reason She Agreed to Marry Maury Povich After 2 Proposals

With her memoir now out in the world, Chung says that she’s looking forward to having a “more normal life” again. Her son, now 29, recently got engaged to his long-time girlfriend, and Chung is also ready to spend more time with Povich too.

“I've been pretty nuts with this book, and tortured over the writing of it, tortured about finishing it, and then all the subsequent things that I didn't really know existed in this writing process,” Chung says. But reflecting on it all, the broadcaster has some advice for her younger self, as well as the journalists that are coming up in her footsteps.

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“If I had to do [it] over again, I would not have been so cooperative,” she says. “I would suggest to many women that they need to speak up, not be unsure of themselves, [and] believe that you can do it as well as the men — because you can.”

“The first one through the door faces the heaviest gunfire, but there's always a benefit to be gained,” Chung adds. “And the benefit that I experienced was extraordinary."

Connie is now available, wherever books are sold.

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