As a single mother of three with a primetime slot on Fox News, Laura Ingraham gets asked the same question again and again: How do you manage to balance it all?
The 61-year-old’s answer is refreshingly honest: ‘I don’t.’
While viewers of her 7pm show, The Ingraham Angle, may see her – complete with perfectly coiffed hair, a fresh face, and elegant outfits – and assume there is a secret recipe to her success, Ingraham insists there isn’t.
In fact, as she tells the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview, some days she feels like she’s barely getting by.
‘I don’t think I’m any different from any other mother out there who has a job that’s fairly demanding and, at the same time, I have the added excitement of being a single parent. At any given point in the day we feel like we’re not doing enough,’ she says.
But over the years, the glamorous cable news host has worked out a routine that helps her manage stress and keep on top of her hectic workload, all while looking perfectly poised.
On a normal day, Ingraham wakes at 6am, makes her boys, Nikolai, 14, and Dmitri, 16, breakfast – usually bacon and eggs, sometimes blueberry pancakes – and gets them off to school. Her 19-year-old daughter, Maria, is away at college.
Ingraham then turns to a daily workout routine, usually a circuit training class at Orangetheory – a boutique fitness chain where memberships start at $129 a month.
As a single mother of three with a primetime slot on Fox News, Laura Ingraham gets asked the same question again and again: How do you manage to balance it all? The 61-year-old’s answer is refreshingly honest: ‘I don’t.’
While viewers of her 7pm show, The Ingraham Angle, may see her – complete with perfectly coiffed hair, a fresh face, and elegant outfits – and assume there is a secret recipe to her success, Ingraham insists there isn’t.
On a normal day, Ingraham wakes at 6am, makes her boys, Nikolai, 14 (left), and Dmitri, 16 (right), breakfast, usually bacon and eggs, sometimes blueberry pancakes, and gets them off to school.
Laura’s 19-year-old daughter, Maria (pictured right), is away at college.
‘I’m not a great sleeper,’ Ingraham admits, ‘but for me, exercise is the absolute key. I’ve always been athletic. Back in high school, I was voted class athlete by my entire class.’
When she’s not working out, Ingraham still remains active, whether that’s through tossing around a football with her boys or racing them in sprints in the yard of their northern Virginia home.
‘For the longest time I could beat them,’ she jokes, ‘but then getting older means learning how to give up things graciously.’
Not that you could tell that she’s getting older: Ingraham – who joined Fox News as a contributor in 2007 and began hosting her own nightly hour in 2017 – still keeps a schedule that many 20-somethings would struggle to keep up with.
After her workouts, she has an 11am call with her Fox production staff to brainstorm ideas ahead of her evening show. Despite a reported salary of over $10 million a year, Ingraham still makes her own lunch.
Then it’s time to start writing for the show. Staffers say she prides herself on writing the heft of her opening monologue and the bulk of the show herself, while an editorial team helps with edits.
By 6pm she’s in the studio for hair and makeup. ‘For me, less is more, but you have to wear makeup on TV or you look pretty bad,’ she says. And at 7pm on the dot, she’s live on air.
Of course, Ingraham is the first to point out that her life is made easier by the fully staffed Fox styling team, who diligently lay out wardrobe options and help groom her to perfection.
‘I have a person who helps with [my outfits], she lays out a bunch… I like a lot of blues. I like a lot of turquoise. I like color. I like pastels, too, but especially blues and certain jewel tones make me feel good,’ Ingraham explains.
But it’s not always a complete look.
Letting us in on a TV secret, Ingraham says she’ll sometimes keep her jeans on beneath her broadcast desk, out of view from the cameras.
A brand favourite: Los Angeles-based Mother Denim. ‘I could wear them all day long,’ she says.
Off air, Ingraham ditches the heavy TV makeup and keeps a simple skincare routine.
‘In normal life, I wear pretty minimal makeup. I think I buy most of my makeup at the pharmacy,’ she says. ‘I have some nice foundations and stuff like that, but I tend to keep it really clean and polished.’
She also eats and drinks with a focus on maintaining her health.
‘I drink water every chance I get, and then I have zero alcohol during the week,’ she says. ‘I’m one of those people who thinks it’s fun to have a margarita every now and then but that’s it.’
Religion also plays a big role for Ingraham – and for her children, all of whom she adopted, the boys from Russia and Maria from Guatemala.
‘Staying sharp is taking care of your body and your mind,’ she says. ‘For me that’s making sure I get to Mass and making sure I try to put God first in what I do.’
Choosing to adopt, Ingraham says, has been a key to her happiness: ‘We have a very unusual family, and it’s not perfect, we have our moments, but it’s been a beautiful blessing to me.’
Despite the glamorous lifestyle viewers might expect from the never-been-married host of a top-rated cable news show, Ingraham opts for the quiet life and tends to head right home after broadcasts.
‘It’s hard, because I’m not really a big cocktail party person anyway but you do miss a lot, working at that time of day, and that’s also kids’ homework time,’ she says.
‘My day ends after our post-show production call at 8.15pm. We do a quick postmortem on the show and chat about ideas for tomorrow. But I’m never very far from the news.’
Certainly, Ingraham’s dedication to the job has been rewarded. She is now the highest-rated woman in cable news history, according to Fox data, averaging around three million viewers per show.
After her workouts, she has an 11am call with her Fox production staff to brainstorm ideas ahead of her evening show. (Ingraham is pictured with Fox and Friends cast members: Lawrence Jones, Steve Doocy, Carley Shimkus and Brian Kilmeade).
Certainly, Ingraham’s dedication to the job has been rewarded. She is now the highest-rated woman in cable news history, according to Fox data, averaging around three million viewers per show. (She is pictured here with Fox’s Jesse Watters).
Still, her high-profile persona does come with its difficulties. Ingraham is known for her outspoken political opinions, which often draw their fair share of public ire.
Ingraham is staunchly pro-gun rights, as well as a vocal defender of Donald Trump – sharing in particular his belief that America’s borders must be secured.
‘People have now seen what the radicalism of the left has wrought on our schools and on our government,’ she says. ‘I think more Americans just want to return to common sense.’
Most of the negative responses she has received – often in the form of social media trolling – are reactions to her opinions on these topics.
But it’s important, Ingraham says, for her to draw a line between her work and home life.
‘I’ve literally never googled myself, never, not once. People never believe that. But I don’t care,’ she says. ‘I do care about what my family thinks, my close friends. But as far as the anonymous critics out there, what the press thinks, I don’t care. If I wanted to please the press, I would have taken a very different career path.’
It’s hard to argue that the one she’s taken hasn’t paid off.
