New York Post - David Letterman Article

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September 12th 2003

New York Post - David Letterman Article

David Letterman is going to be a father. Regina Lasko, 43, the CBS late-night host's longtime girlfriend, is pregnant.

"She's huge, like six or seven months," said a source who confirmed the pregnancy yesterday. "The staff at the show can't believe no one called before this."

Letterman, 56, who underwent quadruple bypass surgery four years ago, is thrilled he's about to become a dad. "He's nervous, but he's psyched," said one insider.

There's no confirmation of a rumor that the two have secretly married. "I can believe it because he is an extremely old-fashioned guy," said our source.

Letterman, who grew up in Indiana, first hooked up with Lasko 10 years ago when she worked for him on his then-new "Late Show with David Letterman."

The following year, he explained to Esquire why he never slept over with Lasko in her TriBeCa loft and preferred driving back up to his house in Connecticut every night.

"I like to get outta town," he said at the time. "Driving home at night is not such a bad thing. It's a good way to let stuff go . . . By the time I get home, the circuit breakers have been reset, you know."

But Lasko - who is just as private as Letterman and hardly ever goes to public events - eventually moved in with him in his house in New Canaan.

This would be a second marriage for Letterman, who was wed for seven years to college bride Michelle Cook. "For what I put her through, I should burn in hell for the rest of my life," he told Esquire.

Letterman also had a long affair with Merrill Markoe, one of the writers on his show, which ended unhappily. He told the magazine, "I just don't know how to behave [toward women], you know? I don't know how you break up with people . . . I'm no day at the beach, let's just say that. Right, kids?"

Fans who watch Letterman regularly have detected a more philosophical, less cynical, mood. Interviewing Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who cut off his arm with a penknife after it became pinned under a boulder, Letterman wondered, "Could everybody have done this?" Ralston, 27, replied, "If you had a choice to go through an hour of pain to live another 60 years, you'd do the same thing." Letterman didn't make any jokes.

The change to the kinder, gentler Letterman has led some fans to believe he might be contemplating retirement. They'll be happy to know they were wrong. It isn't retirement he's approaching, it's fatherhood.

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By RICHARD JOHNSON