Last updated: October 2026
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | June Carlyn Baranco (also uses June Gumbel professionally) |
| Born | Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA |
| Date of birth | Often listed as June 22, 1948, but not confirmed by a strong primary source |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Bachelor of Fine Arts, Louisiana State University (1971) |
| Known for | Fine art, handmade hats (Geaux Chapeaux), and her marriage to Bryant Gumbel |
| Spouse | Bryant Gumbel (married December 1973, divorced 2001) |
| Children | Two: Bradley and Jillian |
| Based in | Westchester County, New York |
| Net worth | Not publicly confirmed |
Who Is June Baranco?
June Baranco is an American fine artist and hat maker who was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Many people first learn her name because she was the first wife of television journalist Bryant Gumbel, the longtime host of NBC’s Today show and HBO’s Real Sports. That marriage explains why people search for her, but it covers only one part of her life. She studied art at a major university, worked in several creative fields, and later built her own millinery business, which is the craft of designing and making hats.
It also helps to clear up a common mix-up. Searching for this name brings up other people with similar surnames, such as the Atlanta business leader Juanita Baranco and the Spanish actress María Barranco, but they are different people with no connection to this story. This article is about the Louisiana-born artist who was married to Bryant Gumbel.
Early Life and Education
June grew up in Baton Rouge, where Southern traditions around family, church and dress shaped her taste from a young age. According to her business biography, an aunt who worked as a seamstress taught her to sew by hand, and her parents later gave her a sewing machine when she was around ten years old. Hats were also a normal part of the culture around her, since women in her community often wore them to church, weddings and other celebrations. Those early lessons later became the base for her fashion and design work.
She went on to study painting and drawing at Louisiana State University and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1971. This detail matters because some low-quality websites claim she trained as a lawyer or only worked as an airline employee, and neither claim fits what her own professional profile says. Her art education was the real foundation of her later career, even though public attention mostly focused on her husband for many years.
Meeting Bryant Gumbel and Getting Married
Several profiles say June met the Gumbel family while she was still a student, and that she visited Chicago to see a friend in the late 1960s. Bryant’s father reportedly showed her around the city, which began a connection with the family before Bryant was a national name. She also worked as a flight attendant for a period, a detail that appears in a well-known biographical entry as well as in magazine profiles. Not every site agrees on the exact timeline of her early jobs, so it is safest to say she worked as a flight attendant at some point in her younger years.
June and Bryant married on December 1, 1973, according to multiple reports. At that time Bryant was still building his career as a sportscaster, long before he became the first Black lead anchor of Today in 1982. The couple later lived in Waccabuc, a small community north of New York City, during the years when his television career grew. For most of that time June stayed out of the spotlight, which is why her own work is rarely mentioned in short celebrity summaries.
Family and Children
June and Bryant have two children, a son named Bradley and a daughter named Jillian. Some websites list the son’s name slightly differently, and older sources sometimes use only his middle name, but the more reliable reports give his name as Bradley Christopher Gumbel. Jillian’s full name is usually given as Jillian Beth Gumbel. Both children grew up in a household shaped by early morning broadcast schedules, travel and public events.
Beyond these basic details, very little is known about the children’s private lives, and it would not be fair to guess. June herself has kept her family life quiet, and she has no active public social media presence that has been verified. What is clear is that the children remained an important part of her life after the marriage ended. Her daughter’s wedding in 2011 also became the starting point for her hat business, which is covered below.
The Divorce: What Is Confirmed and What Is Not
The couple separated around the end of the 1990s, and the divorce became final in 2001 after a legal process that lasted several years. Reports from that time described the case as bitter and widely covered by the press. June’s side accused Bryant of repeated infidelity, and the Associated Press carried statements from her lawyer. These were claims made during a divorce case, not findings from a public trial, so they should be read as allegations.
Money is where many websites go wrong. Some claim June received exactly half of a fortune worth a specific dollar amount, and others quote different numbers or dates. Credible reporting says the final agreement was sealed, which means the real terms were never released to the public. Bryant Gumbel later married Hilary Quinlan in 2002. Any article that gives precise settlement figures should be treated with caution.
June Baranco’s Art Career
June’s official profile describes her as a working fine artist who has used oils, pastels, drawing, printmaking, pottery and stained glass, and who has also designed clothing. Her work has reportedly been shown in New York, California, Connecticut, Louisiana and Great Britain. She is also listed as a member of groups such as the Pastel Society, the Portrait Society, the Salmagundi Club and the Katonah Museum Artist Association. These memberships suggest a long and steady commitment to art rather than a short project started after her divorce.
Some profile sites also say she created a woodcut print connected with the opening of the African Meeting House in Boston, but this detail comes from weaker sources and I could not confirm it from a primary record. Because of that, it is only mentioned here as unconfirmed. If you are researching her art in depth, the best places to check are gallery listings, exhibition catalogs and her own professional pages.
Geaux Chapeaux: Her Hat Business
Her hat-making business began with a simple shopping problem. When her daughter was planning a wedding in 2011, June felt that many bridal headpieces were expensive and lacked originality, so she decided to make her own. She studied vintage hats, collected hat blocks, ribbons, lace, feathers and special tools, and slowly developed a small millinery brand called Geaux Chapeaux in Westchester County. The name is a playful Louisiana-style spelling, since “geaux” echoes the word “go” and “chapeaux” is the French word for hats.
This business shows how her different skills came together. It uses her fine art training for shape and color, her childhood sewing lessons for hand finishing, and her Southern love of dress hats for style. She has continued to use the name June Gumbel in her professional life, which sometimes causes confusion when people search for her under her birth name. For readers interested in handmade fashion, Geaux Chapeaux is probably the clearest example of how she built something of her own.
Age, Net Worth and Where She Is Now
Many websites state that June was born on June 22, 1948, which would make her 78 in 2026. This date appears again and again, yet at least one careful profile says it is not reliably confirmed by a strong public source, so it is best treated as a reported date rather than a proven one. The same caution applies to money. Her net worth has never been publicly confirmed, and any dollar figure online is only a guess, so I have not listed one.
As for where she is today, trusted information points to a private life in the New York area, centered on art, design and her hat business. There is no verified report of a major recent event, and I did not find any credible news from 2026 about her. Headlines that promise a “shocking reveal” or claim she launched a large nonprofit this year appear on low-quality pages with no named source, so they should not be believed. Because of this, this biography has no recent news section on purpose.
How This Was Researched
I wrote this biography by comparing several recent profiles, a reference entry on Bryant Gumbel, and the details taken from June’s own professional biography as quoted by other writers. I checked the main facts, such as the marriage year, divorce year and children, across more than one source. Many existing articles repeat unconfirmed claims, mix her up with other people, or invent details about her career, so I tried to separate what is solid from what is only repeated online. Where a detail was unclear, I said so instead of guessing.
Accuracy Note
This biography is based on publicly available information, including reference entries and published profiles. Some details about private individuals are hard to confirm, and we have marked those clearly. If you notice anything outdated or incorrect, please let us know so we can update it.
Written and researched by Laura Castillo, contributor at icons golf cart