CBS News correspondent Lee Cowan and NBC News producer Molly Palmer now officially are husband and wife.

After getting hitched last Saturday in Washington, DC, the new Mrs. Cowan emailed TVNewser from France, where the newlyweds are on their honeymoon.   Their wedding day, Molly says, was “amazing”.

The ceremony was held at St. Alban’s Parish, with a reception at the Chevy Chase Club in Maryland.

As The New York Times reports, those locations are steeped in tradition.  They were the same as those for Palmer’s parents’ wedding some three decades before.  Furthermore, Father of the Bride John Palmer, the former NBC White House correspondent and Today news anchor, met Mother of the Bride Nancy Doyle Palmer when both were working at NBC News - just as Molly and Lee met while they were colleagues at the network, at NBC’s Los Angeles bureau.

John Palmer told TVNewser last August that “we are not losing a daughter, just adding another journalist to the family, and a fine one he is!”

More photos, after the jump…

As the Girl Scouts of the USA celebrates its 100th anniversary, we’re finding out which  tvnewsers once were Scouts themselves.

The girl pictured at right?  Yup, it’s Katie Couric, who tells ABC News online of having competed for the ‘Most Creative Dish’ award at a troop cookout.  Despite the steak sandwich she whipped up, she lost out, “much to my chagrin”.

The lesson she learned? “Sometimes life isn’t fair. It can be tougher to swallow than a steak sandwich, but that’s the way the hoagie roll crumbles.”

PBS’ Judy Woodruff also was a Scout, for about nine years. “It broadened my horizons in an important way,” she says, “and I’ll always be grateful to the Girl Scouts for that.”

Perhaps Becky Quick‘s nickname should be the “Business Whisperer”?  And do we know what she did last summer?

What TVNewser is hinting at - ever so cleverly - is that it struck us just the other day: Quick bears a striking resemblance to actress Jennifer Love Hewitt. From their hair to the shape of their faces, well, we’re just sayin’.

Quick, by the way, has been back on the airwaves now since November after taking maternity leave for the birth of her baby boy in August.

So what do you think - is Becky Quick a doppelganger for JLH?

Is it naughty or nice?  We’ll let you decide on this Christmas Eve day: a Mad Libs twist on the classic poem ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, courtesy of Jimmy Fallon and friends.  His partners in crime include NBC’s Brian Williams, as well as Howie Mandel, rapper T.I., Martin Short,  Maya Rudolph, and others.

Enjoy.

Former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan now can add the title “radio host” to her resume.

She’s got her own nighly program, ”The Daryn Kagan Show,” which debuted last week.  It airs on adult-contemporary stations in four markets -  Louisville, New Orleans, Norfolk, and San Antonio –  from 7pm to midnight.

In a nod to the focus of her website,  the show features  “good news” stories, as well as live interviews, listener calls, and music.   The program also streams live online.

He was one of CBS’s “Murrow’s Boys”, then a moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, now a Fox News contributor.  Not surprisingly, Marvin Kalb has a lot to say about television news.

TVNewser caught up with Kalb, 81, during a visit to Chicago’s Pritzker Military Library Thursday night, during a speaking tour for a book he co-authored with his daughter Deborah Kalb.  Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency From Ford to Obama addresses how the shadow of the war continues to affect White House decision-making to this day.

TVNewser: In your talk tonight you said that “today’s reporters are better educated about the military than they’ve ever been”. Which current tvnewsers do you think do a good job of covering the Pentagon, the military?

Kalb: Jim Miklaszewski at NBC does a very fine job. At CBS, David Martin is a highly-experienced, skillful, knowledgeable reporter who’s about as solid in covering the Pentagon as anybody you can find.  And there are many others as well, but those are two first-rate TV reporters.

TVNewser: I want to ask you about Andy Rooney, whom you know well and who’s in the hospital right now.  Do you know anything about his condition?

Kalb: No I don’t…Andy is a remarkable example of a reporter who started in World War II, and right up to the present day, was able to observe the nuttiness of life.  And reported with a touch of humor and class.  And he will always be among my favorites.

TVNewser:  Fox News CEO Roger Ailes recently talked about a “course correction” for the network.  As an FNC contributor, what are your thoughts on that?

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Martin Fletcher, journalist-author.

Or is it author-journalist?

“I love both” roles, Fletcher tells TVNewser via phone from his home in Israel.

It’s been nearly two years since Fletcher stepped down from his full-time role as NBC News Tel Aviv bureau chief and correspondent.  He’s had more time ever since to write books, and he also kept alive his ties to NBC when he subsequently returned to the network to report on a freelance basis.

“There’s nothing written that you have to have one job your whole life,” Fletcher reflects. “I think I made the transition at the right time of life, and what I am doing now is the right thing for this phase of my life.”

It’s a busy phase for sure. In addition to researching and writing, Fletcher does some public speaking and teaching. And he’ll be back on a book tour soon with the release tomorrow of his third book — and first novel — The List.

“It’s about, in a sense, my family story,” says Fletcher, “but it’s totally fictionalized because my parents never spoke about their story.”

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Ann Curry is on the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal this month, and she talks with the magazine about succeeding Meredith Vieira as Matt Lauer’s co-anchor on Today.

“I was not expecting to become cohost,” she says. “Because you know what?  After having the experience the last time where I was not asked to do this [after Katie Couric left], I pretty much decided that there is no ‘deserving’.  Nothing is owed you.”

But upon getting the nod, “I was thrilled to pieces. But the biggest thing for me as I walked out of my boss’s office was that the last brick of sorrow I’d been carrying around since my dad died [in 2008] fell to the ground, because I was filled, suddenly, with his pride. It pushed ­every last bit of grief out of me because I could feel him say, ‘Ann, I’m so proud of you…The best thing you’re ever going to do, you haven’t even thought of yet. You’re just getting started.’”

Writer Judith Newman asks Curry if she would have stayed with the program if she’d not gotten the top job. “I’d still be here,” Curry tells her. “I’m loyal like a dog.”

Remember the ‘Balloon Boy’ saga?

For most Americans, the story that captivated cable news viewers in October of 2009 has faded from memory.  But not for NBC News correspondent Lee Cowan and ”Today” show associate producer Molly Palmer, both of whom covered the infamous escapade.

“That’s kind of when I think we started to really notice each other,” Palmer tells TVNewser.

The two – both Los Angeles-based - had worked together previously, but got to know one another better during days in Colorado covering the Heene family.  After dating for nearly two years, the couple recently got engaged during a vacation in Kauai.

“I”m just excited,” Palmer says. “I’m just so happy. I love Lee so much, and I am just so sure that I want to be with him forever that it feels right and like an exciting next step.  I’m just ready to be a family with him.”

Family is important to Palmer and Cowan, who say both sets of their parents are delighted at the news.  That includes Cowan’s future father-in-law, former NBC White House correspondent and Today news anchor John Palmer.

“Lee and Molly are a great couple and very much in love,” John Palmer tells TVNewser.  “My wife Nancy and I are thrilled for them.  We are not losing a daughter, just adding another journalist to the family and a fine one he is!”

It’s high praise from a man Cowan has long admired.  “I gotta tell you,” Cowan recalls to TVNewser, “I’ve never been so nervous meeting him the first time.  I mean, it’s one thing to introduce yourself to your girlfriend’s father, but it’s quite another when it’s John  Palmer!”

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For a news junkie, Ireland is the place to be in May.

Today Queen Elizabeth begins a visit to the Emerald Isle, with President Obama due to arrive on Monday. The ”Month of Welcomes”, as it’s being called, is a bonanza for Ireland’s two national TV news networks, RTÉ and TV3.

“It’ll be absolutely huge,” RTÉ news editor Fiona Mitchell tells TVNewser, as I toured the network’s newsroom and observed a broadcast from the control room during a Dublin vacation last week.

RTÉ — Raidió Teilifís Éireann, or Radio Television of Ireland – is akin to Britain’s BBC as the nation’s principal national public service broadcaster.

News staffers produce three weekday broadcasts (called ”bulletins”) — about 20 minutes at 1pm, one hour at 6pm, and a half-hour at 9pm — plus various news cut-ins.

Mitchell says that on average, an RTÉ newscast contains “about 50% Irish news, then 25% Europe, and obviously, as a member of the European Union, European news can actually be Irish news.

“It’s our place in Europe, it’s what the rest of Europe thinks of us, especially with [Ireland’s] ongoing economic crisis. And probably beyond that, about 25% international news.”

RTÉ employs more than 200 people in bureaus across Ireland, as well as in Belfast, Brussels, London, and Washington, D.C. Dublin staffers work at a central newsroom just southeast of

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