Braiden’s varied career included stints as a U.S. State Department officer, public relations executive, magazine writer, television interviewer, and aide to John F. Kennedy and Nelson A. Rockefeller. And in the meantime, she raised eight children.
Her husband, newspaper columnist Tom Braden, wrote about her and the family in the book Eight is Enough — which was adapted into the TV series of the same name which ran 1977 to 1981. Of the eight kids, seven are still alive; the youngest, Tom, died in 1994. Mrs. Braden died August 29 from a heart attack. She was 77.