Friday morning, early. Katie Couric presides in the brightly lit, comfy confines of NBC's Studio 1A. Outside the reinforced glass panes that surround the street-level studio, hundreds of ebullient fans scramble for position. For several minutes, while commercials air and affiliate stations cut in with local news, Couric is practically alone in the quiet studio, chatting with a wheelchair-bound young man whom she has invited in for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of bigtime network television. For the sake of her guest, Couric wants to reposition some heavy video equipment. But the Todaycrew is on a break. What to do? The $60 million anchor drops her script and proceeds to lean into the equipment. "Don't tell the union!" she quips as she moves a giant monitor.

As she cheerfully rearranges the hardware, it's easy to forget last spring's rash of reports portraying Couric as an out-of-control celebrity, awash in riches and ego, who had turned against her NBC colleagues in an effort to hijack Today and fashion it around her personal tastes (which, among other things, meant more on-camera Katie, less Matt Lauer, her cohost).

The recent scuds were far more than unpleasant distractions. They were vicious, seemingly intent on upending Couric's durable rep as the cheery neighbor. In an uncommonly harsh review precipitated by Today's ratings slide—at the time, ABC's Good Morning America was threatening to overtake NBC's most profitable TV franchise—New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley wrote of Couric that "America's girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights." New York magazine quickly followed with a piece that was even more critical, describing a "crisis" at Today attributable largely to Couric's shift to self-involved TV megastar.

Friends say Couric was profoundly hurt by the mean-spirited media. "Nobody enjoys being trashed," she says now, sitting in her dressing room. "But it comes with success, with an increasingly snarky environment in the world today."

The attacks, she contends, were "predictable and tiresome. There's been a lot of completely bogus stuff written about me. That's been tough for me as a journalist." An example: "Five publications once wrote that I had a laparoscopic brow lift— which was completely, patently false."

But wasn't there just the teensiest bit of truth to any of the charges that she was a harridan around Today's offices?

Couric pushes back in her chair, dabs at the makeup beneath her eyes, and concedes that until NBC installed a new executive producer in April, she was desperately unhappy with the program. "I was objecting to things and I was frustrated. Frankly, when we get away from talking about issues that are important, I'm gonna be a pain in the neck. I do speak up when I think the show is doing things that are weak journalistically, or tabloidy. That makes me a target internally and externally."

But as for those stories about her diva dramatics, she says, they were "full of malarkey."

Lauer lines up squarely behind his partner. They're not exactly social buddies, but he deeply appreciates their on-camera chemistry, which is real, and he understands that, until Today's former producer was axed, Katie truly believed the show had taken a profoundly wrong turn. "The shots taken at her were grossly unfair," says Lauer. "What people don't know is how much she cares about the subjects she talks about."

Despite the recent lumps, Couric seems content with her life as 2006—and her 49th birthday (on January 7)—approaches. In view of the personal calamities she has endured while in the spotlight's glare—the death of her husband, Jay Monahan, in 1998, followed by that of her sister Emily Couric, not quite four years later—she appears to have rebounded remarkably. The truth, however, is that she's human, like the rest of us. Lauer recalls visiting the day after Couric's husband died: "She was alone in her apartment. It was heartbreaking."

She speaks slowly, deliberately, barely above a whisper. "It was difficult. I'm certainly not alone in my experiences. I felt that for me and for my daughters I needed to maintain some sense of normalcy and routine. It's all kind of a blur." She fiddles with her mobile phone, then puts it aside. "I have a lot of grieving that I still haven't done because I was so busy and focused on my girls, focused on the fact that I had to continue to earn a living. So I don't think I ever truly let my guard down. I sort of titrated the grieving process through the years." For a moment the exhaustion spreads across her face, still covered with TV makeup. "Grief is a strange animal," she says. "It creeps up on you at strange times. I have a sense that I'm not through with the process."

The sadness is mitigated by the challenges of raising two daughters, Ellie, 14, and Carrie, nine. They are her top priority, and although like most working moms she wishes she could do more, she gives them as much time—including travels together as a family—as she can. Friends portray her as a perfect school mom, attending every milestone event. But Couric says it's not true. "I'd like to be more involved, to be honest." A moment of reflection. "No, I'm not particularly involved, actually." She sounds regretful.

Above all else, she aches for her girls to be unaffected by their wealth and their mother's standing. "I really do think my daughters are fantastic people. They're developing fine characters," Couric says. Still, "like any parent, I worry. I wonder if behind my back Ellie is saying, 'My mom just does not have a clue' when she tells me she's going someplace and maybe she's not." It's too soon to know what path the girls will follow, but Couric says that "Ellie would make a great lawyer. Her father, you know, was a defense attorney. She always wants to sue people when they've done her wrong."

Couric and her girls live in Manhattan, in a lovely but not lavish apartment. (Those who know Couric intimately stress that, although she enjoys living well, she has an aversion to overly conspicuous spending.) Their one extravagance: a Steinway grand piano, which Katie, Ellie, and Carrie all play.

It has been seven years since Couric was widowed—long enough to wonder if she is interested in marrying again. "I'm open. I would love to have companionship and a partner and someone to make new memories with," she says. "It would be great to have someone who could be a guiding force in Ellie and Carrie's life. But I also think I don't want to make a bad decision. I feel that I have a chance at another chapter in my life, and I don't want to be foolish and do something for the wrong reasons that won't make me happy in the long run."

For several years Couric dated Tom Werner, a high-profile Hollywood producer, but their bicoastal relationship faltered and eventually ended last year. More recently she has been linked to New York trumpeter Chris Botti, but he has publicly stated that it's over. The ideal husband, should there ever be another? "A very strong person," says Couric. "For me, character and integrity and emotional stability are really important because life is hard, and if you're not solid or if you don't have inner emotional integrity, life becomes too untenable."

Among other things, Couric is quietly using this period of single motherhood to examine her metaphysical dimensions. Raised a Presbyterian, she says, "I'm very interested in exploring a more spiritual side of me, and I'm in the process of doing that, both formally and informally. I really envy those who have a steadfast, unwavering faith, because I think it's probably so comforting and helpful during difficult times.

"People my age," she says, "are searching for greater purpose, something bigger than ourselves."

To that end Couric helped found the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at New York-Presbyterian Medical Center. She devotes considerable energy to the cause. Her weeklong Today series in 2000, during which she underwent an on-air colonoscopy, has produced what is now generally referred to in the medical community as the Couric Effect.

"Within days of the series we had a 20 percent increase in screenings, and there's been no sign that that's fallen off," says A. Mark Fendrick, M.D., of the University of Michigan School of Medicine, who has studied the surge in colonoscopies that followed Couric's on-air procedure. "There's no telling how many lives have been saved and surgeries averted."

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While it was not exactly preordained that Couric would be a journalist, her father's years as a political reporter for newspapers in Georgia and Florida had a strong influence on the youngest of the three Couric kids. In the late '50s the family settled in Arlington, Virginia, moving into a brick Dutch Colonial house on a gently sloping street. John and Elinor Couric paid about $25,000 for the place. They live there to this day, their daughter says, "because it's very wholesome and it's convenient to Washington."

She visits often, sleeping in her old second-floor bedroom. "It's a lot more staid" now than when she occupied it as a teen: she recalls a room once outfitted "with Peter Max bedspreads and chartreuse walls. I decided to be psychedelic."

Today, Couric says, "there's something incredibly comforting and grounding" about returning to the familiar house, although "my parents are getting older, and that frightens me." She stayed with them earlier this year during her 30th high-school reunion weekend. ("Everyone wanted a picture taken with me! I felt like Mickey Mouse.") Sleeping in her childhood bed and seeing all those Yorktown High classmates again gave her a unique perspective on the craziness of the last three decades. The erstwhile high-school cheerleader-turned-powerhouse-network-newswoman draws a deep breath, as if taking in the immensity of it. "It was weird to sort of reflect back on my life and all the twists and turns it's taken."

Fortunately for Couric, her career has been pretty much a rocket ride right from the start. After high school, where she'd been a gymnast and an honor student, she enrolled at the University of Virginia as an American-studies major; there, not surprisingly, she discovered that she loved working on the school paper. She was a serious undergrad "who never lacked for a date for football games," remembers Kathleen Lobb, who along with Couric was a resident adviser at Emmet House, a dormitory.

She was also a bit of a prankster. Louise Stork, a classmate of Katie's, learned that the hard way. When, as a lark, she hung Katie's underwear out a dorm window, the budding journalist swiftly retaliated by placing articles of Stork's unmentionables in the mailboxes at an all-men's dorm, with notes attached that instructed PLEASE RETURN TO LOUISE STORK. You don't mess with Katie Couric.

Her first job, as a desk assistant in the Washington bureau of ABC News, was an endless churn of grunt work, and the neophyte newsie wondered to herself if she'd made the right career choice. But she hung in and rapidly moved to a succession of other TV newsrooms—initially at CNN, then at local stations in Miami and Washington, D.C.—before she was picked up by NBC as a Today correspondent.

Soon after being paired with Today wunderkind producer Jeff Zucker, she exploded on the national scene. Now president of the NBC Universal Television Group, Zucker says he sensed immediately that Couric had potential star power. "You can teach interviewing skills, you can teach journalism techniques, but you can't teach how to be yourself on camera," Zucker says. "Her sense of humor is the first thing I noticed, and I think that's what attracted the audience to her. She's always had a playfulness that sets her apart."

That slightly antic quality quickly established Couric as a comer at Today and accounted for her promotion to coanchor following the departure of Jane Pauley and the brief stint of her successor, Deborah Norville, whose unpopularity with viewers nearly wrecked the show. Katie's arrival at the anchor desk in April 1991, at 34, had a transformative effect. "We knew immediately that she was going to stick," says Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News.

Matt Lauer became Couric's on-air partner after Bryant Gumbel left the show in 1997. He remembers that they hit it off well pretty much from day one. Today they remain an impressively syncopated TV duo, the prince and princess of wickedly sharp 10-second early-morning banter bites. "We get giddy sometimes," Lauer says. "Because of the hours we work we're often tired and punchy and crazy." He admits that out of camera range he and Katie frequently "get into poking each other" on the Today show sofa.

Mary Murphy, TV Guide's senior writer, believes that Couric's arrival at Today "saved all women in TV news. She broke through, showing a spunky, self-deprecating side. I don't ever remember Barbara Walters (also once a Today anchor) laughing at herself at that time. Katie knows when to be tough; she knows when to laugh."

Her fiendishly alluring smile often seduces interview subjects into a false sense of security. Big mistake, warns Peter Greenberg, Today's veteran travel editor: "Anyone who thinks they'll be treated to a cute, perky Katie—well, she may go ahead and nail you."

These days, with the show under new management, its ratings have improved. Although the morning slot is still a horserace with GMA, Today's audience numbers remain tops. Couric says she's once again satisfied with Today. "It's taking chances, liberated to do all sorts of things."

In her dressing room, she fingers a lipstick cartridge (there are well more than 100 on the table) and reflects on a career that almost didn't happen. "There were times when I wondered if I'd made the wrong choice," she says, remembering the long hours when, straight out of college, she slaved at ABC News. "I asked, 'Is this gonna work out?' "

It worked out so extraordinarily well, of course, that the industry has been wondering all year long where Couric, morning TV's reigning pole star, will land when her lucrative contract expires in May. The betting is that NBC will pony up to keep her in place—although she candidly fesses up to recent conversations with CBS brass to assume the anchor role left vacant by Dan Rather. "There are some appealing things about it," Couric concedes. The downside: "Twenty-two minutes on the Evening News is very unappealing. I don't know if it would be too constraining for me."

The NBC peacock is anxious. Today has grown into one of television's most profitable franchises, generating some $500 million a year for NBC. The show—with Katie in the cohost chair—reportedly single-handedly keeps NBC's news division in the black.

What would suit her best, Couric believes, is an opportunity to do "important journalism. I have a real appetite for smart journalism that's not being done currently. I'd like to provide some type of forum for more intelligent discussion of the issues, so it's not just one person on one side and one person on the other and a lot of screaming."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with the occasional ratings-grabbing human-interest story either. Couric's a master of those—and she enjoyed a big prime-time coup last season when she landed the world-famous "Runaway Bride" for an exclusive interview.

Couric views herself first and foremost as a reporter—but ironically, she has neglected to adequately research a project she's currently considering: her autobiography. "Gene Shalit told me to keep a journal, and I wish I'd taken his advice." She realizes her life could easily have gone in some other direction. In those tough early days it would not have taken much to bump her out of a career in TV. What a close call indeed, she acknowledges. That familiar throaty laugh suddenly explodes from Couric: "I'm glad I stuck with it," she smiles, " 'cause it all worked out!"