Eugene Meyer once said to Alice Roosevelt Longworth: "You watch my little Kate. She'll surprise you." And she did.
Katherine Graham, who died yesterday at the age of 84, went on to become one of the most admired and loved newspaper publishers of her age at the helm of the Washington Post and one of America's most successful businesswomen, propelling the paper and its subsidiaries into the Fortune 500 index.
In the words of a friend yesterday "she didn't break the glass ceiling for women, she smashed it to smithereens."
At the age of 80, to the astonishment of a deeply modest woman who mixed with presidents and swore like a trooper, she also won a Pulitzer Prize for her widely-praised autobiography, Personal History.
Graham had been unconscious for three days after falling and striking her head on a pavement in Sun Valley, Idaho, where she was attending a conference. She died in hospital in Boise, her family by her side.
In 1969, following the suicide of her manic depressive husband, Phil Graham, she had with much trepidation taken on the running of the paper. "When my husband died, I had three choices. I could sell it. I could find somebody else to run it. Or I could go to work. And that was no choice at all."
She began the transformations both from what she called the "doormat wife" to media baroness and the paper's, from city journal to international pre-eminence. She told a friend, "I am quaking in my boots a little but trying not to show it."
She led the paper through titanic battles with the government during the 1970s, strongly backing Ben Bradlee whom she had appointed as editor. First over the publication of the "Pentagon Papers" exposing the Government's mendacity over its role in Cambodia, despite legal threats that could have closed the paper. And then in the long-drawn out investigation of the Watergate saga that would in 1974 eventually contribute to bringing down President Richard Nixon.
As the head of the company, Graham wrote in her book, she was guided by the principle that "journalistic excellence and profitability go hand in hand. I had to try to assure Wall Street that I wasn't some madwoman, interested only in risks and editorial issues, but that I was concerned with how we ran our business".
She let her journalists have their head, steering clear of interfering with editors' rights to edit, however she enjoyed their company and was a friend to many of the younger reporters. But it would be her parties in Georgetown for the elite of US politics which would win her another kind of fame as the city's most influential socialite, while her paper continued to tear strips off them.
Katherine Meyer was born in New York City on June 16th, 1917, the fourth of the five children of Eugene Meyer and Agnes Meyer. Her father was a hugely successful and wealthy investment banker, her mother a patron of the arts and education.
In 1940 she married Phil Graham a brilliant young lawyer working in the newsroom but with political ambitions. Meyer had other plans and by 1948 his son-in-law was publisher of the paper.
Graham stepped down as chief executive officer of The Post Company in 1991.