Joseph Medill Patterson Albright


Joseph Medill Patterson Albright is an American businessman and news publisher. He is the former husband of Madeleine Albright.

Life and career

He was born to Jay Frederick Reeve, a lawyer, and his wife, née Josephine Medill Patterson, a reporter and airplane pilot. His parents divorced in 1944, and his mother married painter Ivan Le Lorraine Albright in 1946. Joseph and his sister Alice were adopted by their mother's second husband, and their surname became "Albright". Two additional children were born to this second marriage, Adam and Blandina.
Albright is the scion of a media empire, the grandson and namesake of Joseph Medill Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News who had rivaled William Randolph Hearst in the 1930s. His great-great grandfather, Joseph Medill, owned the Chicago Tribune and had been elected mayor of Chicago. His aunt, Alicia Patterson, founded Newsday.
Albright attended Williams College. He met Madeleine Jana Korbel when she spent a summer working at the Denver Post. They married in 1959 after Madeleine's graduation from Wellesley College. They had three children: twin girls, Anne and Alice, and youngest daughter Katie. The couple divorced in 1982. Albright remarried Marcia Kunstel. Together, they own Flat Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Family tree