National Public Radio broadcast journalist Susan Stamberg holds up a replica of her new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame following a ceremony in Los Angeles, March 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

Susan Stamberg, a “founding mother” of NPR who joined the network in its infancy and helped blaze a trail for women in journalism, becoming the first female anchor of a national nightly news program in the United States, died Oct. 16. She was 87 and had retired in September.

Her death was announced by NPR, which did not say where or how she died.

Ms. Stamberg arrived at NPR just as the network was going on the air in 1971. At the time, broadcasting was an overwhelmingly male profession; in her first job at NPR, she was tasked with cutting audiotape with a razor blade. But she quickly rose to become a producer and an anchor, serving as a host of the network’s flagship news program, “All Things Considered,” from 1972 to 1986.

“Susan’s voice was not only a cornerstone of NPR – it was a cornerstone of American life,” Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “She showed that journalism could be both rigorous and deeply personal. She inspired countless journalists to believe they could explore life and truth, and lead with both authority and warmth.”

Raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Ms. Stamberg had a distinctive New York accent and a cozy, empathic way with her interview subjects. By one estimate, she conducted some 50,000 interviews, offering listeners a window onto the lives of artists, activists and cultural luminaries from Rosa Parks and Fred Rogers to Joan Didion and pianist Dave Brubeck, whom she interviewed at her own home.

While other broadcasters focused on politics and the news of the day, Ms. Stamberg earned a reputation for following her own curiosities and interests, turning her attention to everything from French impressionist painting to foreign affairs to – at least once – candy.

FILE – National Public Radio staffer Susan Stamberg holds a phone in her Washington D.C. office, Oct. 13, 1979. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)

In a 1979 segment that entered NPR lore, she and science correspondent Ira Flatow investigated what happened when a person bites into a Wint-O-Green Life Saver in the dark. The result, Ms. Stamberg reported from inside a closet, was a momentary green spark.

Alongside Nina Totenberg, Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts, who died in 2019, Ms. Stamberg was part of a small group of women who helped shape the sound of NPR, and of American broadcasting more broadly.

She received critical early support from programming director Bill Siemering, who helped launch “All Things Considered” and tapped her to be an anchor. Ms. Stamberg later learned that station managers called NPR to object, “saying a woman’s voice is not authoritative – no one will take her seriously.”

At the time, however, Siemering kept the criticism to himself.

“He liked what he was hearing, and it was the voice that he wanted to hear and had heard in his head and became the voice of NPR: calm, conversational, chatty over the back fence, tough when need be,” Ms. Stamberg recalled in 2021. “He felt if he just let me go, listeners would get used to it, and things would be fine. And, in fact, that happened.”

As she got going, Ms. Stamberg also served as a mentor and role model for other women in broadcasting.

“Susan taught me how to be a radio reporter,” Totenberg, a veteran legal affairs correspondent, told The Washington Post. “The first time I did a two-way with her, Susan said, ‘Nina, you can’t cover your mouth when you’re talking on the radio.’ ”

Ms. Stamberg joined other women in forming “an old girls’ network” at NPR, Totenberg added, recalling how they aimed to bring in more female journalists and improve conditions for the women who worked there.

Wertheimer recalled that she and Ms. Stamberg initially shared an office with each other – and a Xerox machine.

“There was a time when people really didn’t take women seriously,” she said in a phone interview. “We had to fight through it. And Susan walked at the head of the line.”

Later, male colleagues referred to a corner office area where they sat as “the fallopian jungle,” Totenberg said, adding that “we took it as a badge of honor.”

“We had to stand up to men who were really inappropriate. When you have a critical mass, it’s easier to do that. And Susan was the leader of the critical mass.”

An only child, she was born Susan Levitt in Newark on Sept. 7, 1938. Her father was a manufacturer’s representative, her mother a bookkeeper. They introduced her to the power of radio.

“Radio was the glamour medium of my childhood,” Ms. Stamberg told Variety in 2020. “I loved getting a cold, because I could stay home and my mother would move that radio out of the kitchen into my bedroom, and the two of us would sit and listen to all the soap operas.”

Ms. Stamberg graduated from the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan and studied English at Barnard College, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1959. She worked as an editorial assistant at Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, before marrying Louis C. Stamberg in 1962 and moving with him to Washington, where her husband became an official at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

When he was posted to India for two years, Ms. Stamberg joined him in the country, filing stories for Voice of America.

Her husband died in 2007. Survivors include their son, actor Josh Stamberg; and two granddaughters.

Ms. Stamberg worked for the Washington radio station WAMU-FM before joining NPR. After 14 years anchoring “All Things Considered,” she hosted “Weekend Edition Sunday” from 1987 to 1989 and served as a special correspondent. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1996.

Colleagues said that after finding her voice, Ms. Stamberg was only ever herself on the air. Each year around Thanksgiving, she recited her mother-in-law’s recipe for a “thick, creamy and shockingly pink” cranberry relish, sharing the Pepto-Bismol-colored dish in segments that variously featured two former members of the Cranberries (the Irish rock band), the chief executive of Ocean Spray (the cranberry company) and Ms. Stamberg’s 8-year-old granddaughter, who was not a fan (“I’m never tasting it again”).

Wertheimer recalled that when she and Ms. Stamberg would go out for dinner, the longtime anchor’s voice attracted attention. “They would say, ‘Excuse me, are you Susan Stamberg?’ And she would say, ‘Well, yes,’ and then just to be fun she would say” – as she had for so many years on NPR – ‘And this is the world.’ ”