[4] Her parents divorced early in her childhood and she had foster parents;[5] she refused a scholarship from Wellesley College to join her sister studying at the University of California in Los Angeles, where her father was living, but he died shortly before she started classes.

[13] She anchored CBS Newsbreak and hosted the daytime Magazine news show,[4][7][14] and also made appearances on 60 Minutes.

[1] She later stated that ABC News president Roone Arledge's cancellation of a 20/20 story she had worked on based on a book by Anthony Summers about Marilyn Monroe's relationships with President Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy, which was to have been featured in that year's season premiere, had precipitated the move;[6] after being shortened and postponed, the segment was canceled shortly before it was to have aired.

[15][16] At the time of her move she denied a connection, and that her resignation was related to that of Geraldo Rivera, who left shortly before her after criticizing the decision.

[7] In 2001, when ABC cutbacks led to her contract not being renewed, she moved to PBS,[4] where she was a contributing correspondent for Now with Bill Moyers and the narrator on Exposé: America's Investigative Reports.

[10] While in college Chase married Robert Rosenstone, a graduate student in journalism who became a history professor at the California Institute of Technology, and moved with him to Wisconsin; she returned to UCLA when they separated two years later, and they subsequently divorced.