Her father was a colonel in the Air Force and was one of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Roberts was working every other weekend at a Mississippi TV station, WDAM, when she was recruited for WWL-TV in New Orleans, Louisiana by its longtime assistant general manager and news director Phil Johnson on the recommendation of anchor Angela Hill.

[3] She is the author of Going Live: An Anchorwoman Reports Good News.

In addition to these non-fiction books, Roberts authored the novel Angel Vision.

She is the older sister of Robin Roberts, a co-anchor of ABC's Good Morning America.