Steven D. Cuozzo (born January 17, 1950) is an American writer, newspaper editor, restaurant critic, real estate columnist, and op-ed contributor for the New York Post.
Early life
Cuozzo was born in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, New York. He and his brother, Joseph G. Cuozzo, were children of Lillian (1922 - 1970) and Joseph A. Cuozzo (1916 - 1996), a Brooklyn electrical parts factory worker, and lived at 137 Hull St. In describing growing up in the Italian-Irish neighborhood of Ocean Hill near the J/Z line over Broadway, he noted in 2009, "I recall stoop sitting with neighbors and a happy blur of maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins living in the building next door. I had my first pizza at a joint I recall as Jimmy's, on a corner lost to time a few blocks from home."
Cuozzo attended kindergarten at a Brooklyn Catholic school and, when he was about six years old, his family moved to North Babylon in Long Island, New York, where he would live for the next 17 years. In 1967, Cuozzo began attending Stony Brook University located in Stony Brook, New York. In 1971, Cuozzo graduated from Stony Brook University as an English major.
Career
1970s–1980s
After graduating from Stony Brook University, Cuozzo began his first city job in 1972 as an administrative assistant at the Space for Innovative Development performing arts center. Cuozzo moved into a Riverside Drive apartment in Manhattan and described his new experiences as marking his "portal of entry into Manhattan," where he had his "first whiff of big-city glamour and grit."
On December 18, 1972, Cuozzo began working as a copy boy in the city room at 210 South Street at the New York Post. In a 2012 interview, Cuozzo noted about his entry-level job that "In those days, it literally meant, besides getting coffee for the editors, it meant carrying pieces of copy around." For the next four years, Cuozzo worked in the business run by Dorothy Schiff, an owner and publisher of the Post for nearly 40 years. Cuozzo later would characterize the Post during these four years as a "bastion of principled liberalism" that produced a "stunted broadsheet" with "the graphic appeal of a pothole" In 1976, liberal Schiff sold the Post to conservative Australian American business magnate Rupert Murdoch for a reported $31 million (equals $ million in ). Cuozzo subsequently worked for Murdoch for many years and, in 1996, would be described as viewing Murdoch as "part Santa Claus, part William Randolph Hearst and always larger than life."
In August 1977, the core of Cuozzo's childhood Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill was destroyed by looters and arsonists during the New York City blackout of 1977. Cuozzo would describe this in 2012 as one of his worst memories.
Cuozzo was promoted at the Post in early 1979 to entertainment editor with the title arts and leisure editor. On November 29, 1980, Cuozzo married Jane Hershey, daughter of Solomon G. Hershey, a professor of anesthesiology, and Lenore Hershey, editor-in-chief of the Ladies' Home Journal. Jane Hershey was a New York-based writer and editor who contributed to a variety of periodicals, including Good Housekeeping, Fodor's Travel Publications, and Hollywood Magazine.
In the fall of 1981, Cuozzo was promoted to assistant managing editor in charge of features. In addition to performing the duties of features editor, Cuozzo also was organizing contests and sweepstakes in the paper. On a weekly basis, his job was to come up with a prize, which included a trip to Hawaii and "win breakfast with the baby elephant at the Bronx Zoo." By January 1988, Cuozzo had been working at the Post for about 16 years and held the position of assistant managing editor.
Commenting in September 1981 on a widespread concern that the Post would close, Cuozzo noted, "We were seemingly on the brink of extinction about 12 times in a much more heart-stopping way than this has yet become. I have full confidence in the boss (Murdoch) to somehow steer us through this as long as he is legally able to."
1990s
In August 1990, Power Partners: How Two-Career Couples Can Play to Win, written by Cuozzo's wife Jane, was published. As both Cuozzo and his wife had careers as writers, the book focused on how dual-career couples can enhance their relationships by promoting each other's careers. The book played on tennis analogies and suggested that couples behave as coordinated doubles teams—for instance, providing their spouses' business card at opportune times to help them acquire new clients or accounts.