Joan Lunden's Special Delivery

ByABC News
July 17, 2003, 5:12 PM

July 18 -- A year ago Deborah Bolig was a total stranger to former morning television host Joan Lunden and her husband, Jeff Konigsberg. Last month Bolig made it possible for Lunden and Konigsberg to become parents to twins.

Watch Barbara Walters' full report on 20/20 this Friday at 10 p.m.

Lunden, now 52, and Konigsberg, 10 years her junior, married three years ago and tried everything they could to have biological children on their own. But it just didn't happen.

Enter Bolig, a 41-year-old Cincinnati woman with three children of her own. She agreed to be a surrogate mother for Lunden and Konigsberg. Bolig says this is her "calling." Lunden and Konigsberg say it is a godsend.

"I wasn't ready to put my feet up and retire. I still wanted that life where you're running around chasing kids on bikes and riding bikes with them," Lunden said.

Lunden has three daughters from a previous marriage, but Konigsberg had never had children of his own.

"I fell in love, and married a woman, who had had children, and was older. And I didn't want that to prevent me from, from having the life that, that was important to me. And fortunately, Joan shares that, that dream. And together, together we made a family," he said.

Last month Bolig delivered twins, Kate and Max, in the culmination of one of the more unusual celebrity pregnancies in years.

Kate and Max are now living the easy life in their Connecticut home, filled with all the trimmings and signs of their arrival.

"They both have blond hair. They have little blond peach fuzz there, little blond eyelashes," Lunden said, doting on her new children.

"It is a miracle that we live in a world today that allows us to be able to have babies this way. You know, thanks to modern science," she said.

For 17 years, Lunden was a fixture on ABC's Good Morning America and one of the first anchors to appear pregnant on television. With her first husband, Michael Krauss, Lunden raised three girls now grown-up and successfully marketed her wholesome image, lending her name to a series of books on parenting, cooking and fitness.

But it hasn't always been smooth sailing. In 1992, her squeaky-clean image took a hit when her first marriage ended in a messy divorce. Then in 1997, ABC decided to replace her on Good Morning America.

Three years later, at age 46, she married Konigsberg, who runs a summer camp for children. Except for her cable series, Behind Closed Doors, Lunden was mostly out of the spotlight. That is, until last March, when Lunden put herself back in the news, announcing that she would be a mother again.

Trying to Keep a Biological Connection

Early in her relationship with Konigsberg before they were even engaged Lunden took a fertility test.Lunden said she was told that she'd have no problem at all getting pregnant.