A familiar face to the faithful of France 3. Since the 1980s, Catherine Matausch has worked as a journalist in several local newsrooms in Burgundy, then in Nancy and Amiens, before embodying the regional television news in Picardy. An experience that will propel her into the national newsroom as a reporter for the company service.
First, replacing the presentation of the 19/20 newspaper on the channel (FR3 at the time, editor’s note), Catherine Matausch was established in this position in 1992. Before directing the weekend editions during this same decade . A time slot that the journalist has occupied since 2004 to animate the news bulletin for the weekends of 12/13 and 19/20.
On the strength of this longevity and its popularity with the public, viewers were nevertheless worried about the absence of Catherine Matausch. Removed from the antenna since the spring, the sexagenarian spoke about this withdrawal. “Life has been complicated for a year and a half. I have had several sick leaves due, among other things, to lung cancer,” she confessed on June 18 in the pages of TV Grandes Chaînes.
In front of our colleagues, the journalist poured out on the disease before giving news on his health. “I’m fine. I’m better,” she reassures before justifying her speech, like her late colleague Jean-Pierre Pernaut. “It’s good to talk about it, as he did. I am talking about it here for the first time. In my case, fortunately, the disease is not at the same stage and was treated in time” . While the presenter should remain at the head of the weekend editions for the start of the 2022 school year, she also faced another ordeal during her life…
The eldest of a family of four children, Catherine Matausch (born in 1960) was raised in the Var by a minor father of Czechoslovakian origin and a ceramist mother by profession. “I grew up in a house perched on a hill, which he built with his own hands”, she confided in 2018 in Télé Loisirs about her father. Regarding her mother, “she had a workshop in which she welcomed children. Creative professions interested me”.
Interviewed in TV Grandes Chaînes, the journalist from France 3 admitted to having faced another tragedy, with the disappearance of her mother which occurred in 2021. “I also had to face her death. I went through moments of great loneliness. An immobile life. It has not been fun for me, who needs nature and wandering…”.
Of a discreet nature, Catherine Matausch rarely mentions her sentimental situation. Ex-married and mother of two daughters, the journalist was however faced with a dilemma between her career and her family life. “LCI had offered me a piece of news. A nice offer. I had even signed the contract. It didn’t happen in the end: I was in the middle of a divorce, it was complicated. I chose my children and stability”, she told TV Grandes Chaînes, according to comments relayed by Gala.
Now divorced, Catherine Matausch has chosen to settle in Vendée, where she has lived since 2013, surrounded by her daughters Alix and Marion, aged around 30. “I fell in love”, admits the one who bought a house on the island of Noirmoutier. “She has a crazy charm. It’s my cave, my burrow and I go back there as soon as I can. I can hit the road on Sunday evening after 19-20 and arrive at one in the morning. It’s a simple, authentic, very natural island”. A haven of peace where the journalist can indulge her passion.
When the journalist does not present the information on France 3, Catherine Matausch devotes herself to her passion for painting. Predestined to become an artist by integrating the Fine Arts, her father did not approve of her career choice. “This prospect frightened him. So he told me that I would not go to Fine Arts. He thought that I was going to take drugs and that I would not find a job! When you come from a modest background, the employment of your children is a fundamental question…”, she mentioned to Télé Loisirs in 2018.
Which did not prevent the famous journalist from producing creations that she exhibited in galleries or on her social networks. “What comes out of my paintings? Energy and a lot of colors. For me, painting is a language of poetry. At the moment, I also do a lot of watercolor sketches”, also assured this follower of the photography to our colleagues.
