Who is Bill Ritter's wife, Kathleen Friery?
Andrew Hansen
Published Sep 13, 2026
BILL Ritter is a seasoned journalist and reporter, but little is known about his wife Kathleen.
The news anchor met his wife when they worked on 20/20 on ABC.
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Who is Bill Ritter's wife, Kathleen Friery?
Kathleen Friery is an award-winning producer with over 20 years of experience on network television.
The couple have been married since 2008 and share similar careers, even overlapping at ABC News.
In 1998, while Ritter was a correspondent for 20/20, Kathleen was also working on 20/20 and Good Morning America as a producer.
She eventually left ABC for CNN, where she was a senior producer for Connie Chung Tonight.
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Kathleen was an executive producer on Anderson Cooper 360 and she won four Emmy Awards for her work on that show.
She contributed work to coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 Presidential Primary Campaigns that won Peabody Awards.
Kathleen also earned a DuPont Award for coverage of the tsunami disaster in South Asia.
The couple currently resides in New York. Kathleen works as a self-employed media trainer, while Ritter continues to broadcast for ABC.
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How did Bill Ritter's journalism career begin?
Ritter did not originally set out to work in TV. He started his career in print journalism after studying at San Diego State University.
During the first ten years of his career, he worked as a reporter and business editor, first with The Los Angeles Times, and then with The San Diego Business Journal.
A Los Angeles native, he got his true start in TV with KNSD-TV, an NBC affiliate, reporting out of San Diego.
Before ultimately joining ABC, Ritter covered several national stories, including the Rodney King trial, the following LA riots, and the Gulf War.
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Do Bill Ritter and his wife have any children?
The couple has three children together, two daughters, Mia and Ella, and a son, Owen.
Their daughters encouraged Ritter to finish his undergraduate education at The New School in 2016, 40 years after being asked to leave San Diego State University.
He was expelled for protesting the Vietnam War just one semester before graduating.
In an interview with ABC, Ritter said of the experience: "I wanted to teach them a lesson and say that you are never too old to learn."
