Al Cohn, former Newsday writer, editor who interviewed top celebrities, dies at 84

Longtime Newsday writer and People page editor Al Cohn, known for his interviews with some of the top celebrities of the 1970s and 1980s, died on Saturday after a brief illness, according to his family.

He was 84.

During his 41-year tenure at Newsday, Cohn wrote features, sports stories, and served as editor of the People page for 12 years. Some of his subjects for “The LI Interview,” a feature in Newsday’s Sunday magazine, included boxing champ Muhammad Ali, movie great Cary Grant, Broadway singer Ethel Merman and Rachel Robinson, the widow of his boyhood idol, baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

“He loved his job at Newsday and he worked hard at it,” said Cohn’s wife of 51 years, Meryl Cohn.

Former Newsday editor Tony Insolia remembered Al Cohn as “a solid reporter and a good writer who loved the craft.”

Cohn, who grew up in Brooklyn, married his wife in 1971. They lived in East Rockaway, where they raised their sons, Scott and Andrew. They have four grandchildren.

“He was just a kind, upstanding, moral, ethical man,” Meryl Cohn said. “He loved kids.”

She recalled how her husband would come visit while she worked at a Pennsylvania sleep-away camp during the summer and pay special attention to the children who were homesick.

Meryl Cohn pointed to the heartfelt Facebook post written by their son Scott, who lauded his father — a Little League coach and all-around mentor — as a supportive role model who wanted to help kids reach their potential.

“I’ve got boxes full of letters and Post-it notes calling me the champ,” Scott Cohn wrote. “Whether I was or was not he made me feel like a champ.”

Al Cohn’s Newsday career started in 1963 and spanned several decades before he retired in 2004. During that time, he held a number of writing and editing positions ranging from sports and entertainment to copy editing.

A Brooklyn Dodgers fan who went on to root for the New York Mets, Cohn covered their crosstown rivals the New York Yankees in 1968, Mickey Mantle's last season, for Newsday.

He edited the People page from 1979 to 1991. Interviewing celebrities as well as regular Long Islanders for the page and other stories was a perfect fit, said Meryl Cohn.

“He was a people person,” she said. “He loved talking to people.”

On one memorable day in 1975, Al Cohn raced between Manhattan hotels to interview Grant and Muhammad Ali, said friend and former editor Jack Millrod.

“And somehow, he managed to get to Eisenhower Park in time to play in a Newsday softball league game,” Millrod said. “He told me the story again a few weeks ago. All these years later, he remembered that day so vividly, including having to rap on Ali’s car window to remind the boxing great they’d had an interview scheduled. He also remembered going 5-for-5 in that softball game.”

Millrod, who was Cohn’s editor on the copy desk and now serves as Newsday's director of editorial technology, described him as the “go-to editor for theater, Classical music, opera and art reviews [who] loved working closely with the critics who wrote them.”

“To the younger editors on the desk, Al was a connection to Newsday’s past, and he was such a pro. And he was utterly charming,” Millrod said.

That charm and persistence persuaded a reluctant Joe Namath to give Cohn an interview for the Sunday magazine, Millrod said, recounting a story Cohn shared a couple of years ago. The setting was a Jets preseason workout at Hofstra University. “There were two people in the locker room — the trainer and Namath, who was having his knees taped,” Millrod said. “Al told me Namath smiled and said, ‘I’m not doing any interviews.’ So, Al showed Namath a copy of the magazine’s glossy color cover and promised he’d be on one. Al got the interview.”

In keeping with Cohn’s wishes, family members said there will not be any services or memorial. But they said anyone who wants to make a donation in his name can contribute to the charity No Kid Hungry, which focuses on childhood hunger in the United States.

By Lisa L. Colangelo

lisa.colangelo@newsday.com@lisalcolangelo

Lisa joined Newsday as a staff writer in 2019. She previously worked at amNewYork, the New York Daily News and the Asbury Park Press covering politics, government and general assignment.