A Son's Own Orbit

The family is suitably impressed. "I am surprised at how well he's done it," says Andrew Cuomo, who is 13 years older. "He's my little brother. I remember changing his diapers."

Television, he says, is not such a leap for Chris: "He's trained as a lawyer, which is a big benefit to what he does. He asks the right questions. He understands politics. He understands how change comes about in society."

When Andrew, who failed in his own gubernatorial bid, won the New York attorney general's job in 2006, his brother joined him for the victory speech. "Do I understand the sensitivity? Yes," Chris Cuomo says. "When it comes to my brother and my family, there is no objectivity. There's only unconditional love."

He admits it was "tricky" to cover the prostitute scandal that sunk Gov. Eliot Spitzer, whom Cuomo knows slightly, saying he was sensitive to the "toll" on Spitzer's family and avoided reporting "every salacious detail."

Cuomo is instinctively wary of journalists and grants few interviews; it took him months to agree to speak to The Washington Post. "We argue about it often," says his wife, Cristina Greeven Cuomo, who is editor in chief of Gotham and Hamptons magazines and also writes for the Washington-based Capitol File, which is owned by the same company. "He doesn't want to do publicity and yet he's on TV. Isn't that an oxymoron?"

They met at a party in 1998 -- "he was a big ladies' man," Cristina says -- and he "came on a little strong. He was playing the tough guy." The suitor later called to apologize, they had lunch, and three years later they were married.

Cuomo's sense of competitiveness is unrelenting. An all-American rugby player in college, he took up paddle tennis in recent years. "He's actually unbelievably good," Cristina Cuomo says. "You can't get a ball past him." She is an avid skier, and "I finally got him out on the slopes. In three days he was better than me. Of course it's annoying."

That drive also makes Cuomo hypercritical of his own work as he reviews his videotapes. "He's always his father's son," his wife says. "It's never good enough. They strive for perfection."

When he's not reading about muscle cars -- Cuomo rebuilt his 1969 Firebird convertible -- he dotes on their children, 2-year-old Mario and 5-year-old Isabella, whom he picks up from school. He occasionally talks about them on the air, but "I'm not going to trot my kids out every two seconds because they're cute," Cuomo says.

Cuomo describes himself as an advocacy journalist, and his bosses like that. "He's had a real yearning to seek out the untold stories, particularly of the disadvantaged," Westin says. "He's almost a crusader. It's a form of old-fashioned, muckraking journalism."

Sounding like a courtroom lawyer, Cuomo talks about pursuing corporate malefactors and "putting people in the chair" for cross-examination. His "GMA Gets Answers" segment resembles a staple of local television, and Cuomo admits that such stories often help only one person. Last fall, however, an insurance company changed its overall policy after Cuomo did a story on a 3-year-old boy who needed a motorized wheelchair not covered by the family's insurance.

"It's the most important thing I can do," Cuomo says, pounding the desk. "What frustrates people about these stories is you tell them what the problem is all the time, but you don't hold anyone accountable."

That earnestness may seem over the top at times, but it is the key to Cuomo's sense of himself. "I'm not good at faking the funk, as Robin likes to say. My shtick is having no shtick."