[7] In May 2004, Montagne and Steve Inskeep became interim co-hosts for NPR's Morning Edition, replacing long-time host Bob Edwards who was reassigned as a senior correspondent.

[2] In 2011, Montagne was among the news anchors who attended the traditional off-the-record luncheon with the U.S. president (in this case, Barack Obama) in advance of his State of the Union Address.

Montagne, along with ProPublica reporting partner Nina Martin, spent the next year investigating why women are far more likely to die due to giving birth in the U.S. than all other developed nations.

The stories, aired and published from 2017 through mid-2018, has been credited with inspiring laws in several states, as well as bills at the federal level aimed at protecting birthing mothers.

In a 2018 Forbes op-ed[10] arguing for a federal law to end America's “maternal death epidemic,” Senator Tammy Duckworth cited the NPR/ProPublica investigation Lost Mothers.

Duckworth also linked directly to Montagne's NPR story on how California succeeded in cutting in half its maternal mortality rate.