At Home With Wendy Walker

Wendy Walker, perhaps best known as the longtime producer of CNN’s Larry King Live, greets me with a hug at the front gate of her elegant Rancho Santa Fe home. We are both television news veterans, and I have interviewed her over the years for Ranch & Coast, including a cover story in 2010 after her book, Producer, was published.

The book shares lessons from her three decades in the TV news trenches, from her first job as a secretary at ABC to White House producer at Ted Turner’s startup Cable News Network. A CNN “original,” Walker joined the network when it launched in 1980, covering the White House during three administrations and traveling the world for presidential summits. She later produced CNN’s Larry King Live for 18 years. Notorious, a 2016 ABC television series about a charismatic defense attorney and a cable TV  producer, was loosely based on the friendship between real life attorney Mark Geragos and Walker, who both served as the show’s executive producers.

But these days, Walker is staying closer to home, having found new purpose in home design, art, family (she has two adult children), friendships, and philanthropy. She supports the Global BrainTrust, an initiative focused on women’s brain health and dementia prevention, and serves on the board of the Edith Eger Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people overcome trauma. Walker is close friends with Eger, a 98-year-old psychologist and Holocaust survivor.

Long known for her design savvy and organizational skills, Walker and her home are now featured on “Homeworthy,” a digital media platform and YouTube channel founded by Alison Kenworthy offering video tours of swoon-worthy, beautifully decorated homes around the world. “We believe every home has a story,” says Kenworthy. Walker is also offering insights and design advice on Instagram, Substack, and TikTok.

“One of my passions is decorating,” Walker says. “If I hadn’t been a producer, I’d be an interior designer.” One of her three sisters is a designer, with whom she collaborated on her home. Walker, who has a degree in art from Hollins University in Virginia, describes her home’s style as “cozy with a European accent,” informed by her art studies in Paris, “an experience that shaped the way I see beauty, balance, and the little details that make a home feel lived in,” she says. She recalls sitting on the floor at the Louvre Museum, sketching furniture for a school project. Those sketches, which she later hand-painted, now adorn a bathroom wall. 

Her extensive trips around the world — 50 countries in all — as a television producer have also influenced her style. She has filled her home with treasures from those travels, from fine antiques to finds from the Paris flea markets (her favorite places in the world). Walker was known for bringing some “crazy” items back on press planes, including enormous garlic pots she found in Beijing.

The light-filled living room is a mix of antique and contemporary furnishings including comfortable chairs from Los Angeles interior designer and author Nathan Turner, known for “laid-back luxury,” who has been featured on Bravo’s Million Dollar Decorators. Walker is especially drawn to hand-painted furniture from France, Italy, and Sweden. She commissioned the late artist Todd Murphy to paint the large piece that hangs over the fireplace, a long, ethereal gown with a voluminous skirt decorated with flowers, twigs, and hummingbirds (a nod to the birds which dart about her property). On the opposite wall, a Swedish painting from a Los Angeles antique store depicts children at play, a lovely reminder of her own family. She also treasures a hand-painted 18th-century mirror from C’est La Vie in Encinitas, and entryway benches and art from the former McNally Company Antiques in Rancho Santa Fe.

Walker enjoys entertaining in her glass-enclosed dining room, which opens onto a patio with a fountain and firepit. Although she doesn’t like to cook, she is known for her beautiful table settings and decorations, with place cards she hand-paints, and flowers at each plate. Walker believes dining rooms are often underutilized, so she also uses the space as a reading room where she can grab a glass of wine and a book.

She stacked the long table with dozens of beautiful coffee table tomes on art, architecture, fashion, flowers, and more. They don’t have to cost a fortune, she notes. One of her favorite sources is HomeGoods. Display cabinets in the dining room show off a sparkling collection of wine glasses and champagne buckets, and drawers are filled with table linens.

In the French-inspired family room, Walker has artfully arranged a bookcase with blue Chinese pottery, books, and gold frames. She “shopped” her own home, gathering elements from different rooms for the striking display. “These shelves have become one of my favorite spots in the house, a small place where pieces I love can sit together and tell a story,” she says. “If you’re feeling the urge to revamp your home, you don’t need a full redesign. Start simple. Move things around, restyle a shelf, play with what you already have.”

Walker’s favorite room, the library, also tells a story about her career and the many people she has met along the way. She decorated the walls with framed montages that display hundreds of press passes from her years covering the White House during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton, and bookcases are filled with works by or about the notable people she has known.  

Walker has also saved pieces of history — dozens of handwritten letters and notes from the famous and infamous. They include Jordan’s late King Hussein, a peacemaker, to Manuel Noriega, the late Panamanian military dictator. Hillary Clinton, Ross Perot, John F. Kennedy Jr., and many other notables took time to pen personal messages. Even though Walker’s world was inextricably linked to television news, there is no TV in this room. “I just wanted it to be serene, a room for conversation and contemplation,” she explains.

Photos of family and friends fill her office, including bestie Katie Couric, the broadcast journalist and anchor whom she met on their first day at ABC when both were just beginning their careers. They became roommates and lifelong friends. Images of President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, hold special meaning because Walker was on the front lines of the four summits that ultimately led to arms control agreements and eased Cold War tensions. She and her colleagues were in Berlin at the 1987 NATO summit when President Reagan famously said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” They knew they were watching history in the making. 

There are also photos of actors, singers, and other celebrities, including Paul McCartney, the musician and former Beatle, who performed at Walker’s surprise 50th birthday party at the former Delicias Restaurant in Rancho Santa Fe. She framed the playlist: 22 hits that McCartney sang for nearly two hours. He invited her on stage to sing and dance with him when he launched into “You say it’s your birthday… We’re gonna have a good time…” Although the party was a closely guarded secret for security reasons, word got out, and it made headlines around the world.

Walker has also created a massive, 1,000-page book of photos from her life to pass on to her children. She encourages others to save their own personal histories for their families to cherish.

Life after a long career and raising children can be difficult, she acknowledges. “Ok, what do we do now?” she asks. Walker has been giving that question much thought. Her answer? “You have to find the
purpose within.” 

“We still have a chance to have a different life,” she says. “We didn’t have time before. We do now. Learn a different language, learn to play the piano, instead of just saying ‘my career is over.’ You have to let that go. You have to go to purpose.”

“We’re in the fourth quarter of life,” she continues. “We don’t have to prove anything. I’m not on deadline anymore. I’m looking more at fulfillment, happiness, health, and relationships.”