Eleanor Mondale Poling

Eleanor Jane Mondale was born in Minneapolis on Jan. 19, 1960, the second of three children of Mr. Mondale and his wife, Joan. When she was 4, her father was appointed to the Senate seat vacated by Hubert H. Humphrey, who had become President Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president. She graduated from St. Timothy’s School in Maryland and St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. In college and soon afterward, she spent time in Los Angeles auditioning for television and movie roles, landing small parts in several TV shows, including “Three’s Company” and “Dynasty.” Ms. Mondale began her broadcasting career in the late 1980s as a radio D.J. in Chicago. In 1989, she became an entertainment reporter at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. She later worked as a D.J. at WLOL-FM, a Minneapolis radio station, and as an on-air personality at the E! Online cable channel, ESPN and “This Morning” on CBS. In 2005, she suffered two seizures during a camping trip and received a diagnosis of brain cancer. A year later, after receiving chemotherapy and radiation, she returned to the air as a host of a weekday morning radio show on WCCO-AM in Minneapolis. In March 2009 she gave up those duties, announcing that the cancer had returned. She underwent surgery to remove a tumor that August. Over the years, she was romantically linked to various celebrities, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Warren Zevon and Don Henley, as well as the financier Ronald O. Perelman. She was married three times, first to Keith Van Horne, a former tackle for the Chicago Bears, in 1988; then to Greg Malban, a D.J. known as Greg Thunder, in 1991. In 2005 she married Chan Poling, a musician and composer, and took his last name. In addition to Mr. Poling and her parents, Ms. Poling is survived by her brothers, Ted Mondale, a former Minnesota state senator, and William H. Mondale, a former assistant attorney general of Minnesota.