Background
Cooke was born Frances Jane White in Montclair, New Jersey on January 10, 1913.
Cooke was born Frances Jane White in Montclair, New Jersey on January 10, 1913.
A war widow, in 1946 she remarried to journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke. She was interested in art from an early age, and as an adult created hundreds of paintings. Her portraits of Nathan Milstein and Alastair Cooke are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, District of Columbia.