Born Irene Trepel in
Brooklyn, New York, and raised in
Great Neck, New York, she graduated from Great Neck High School. Kampen attended the
University of Wisconsin–Madison before becoming a
copy girl at the newspaper,
New York Journal American, in 1943. She soon married Owen Kampen, an active-duty
World War II pilot with the
United States Army Air Forces. She went on to work at several weekly newspapers, becoming a reporter for the
Levittown Tribune when the family moved to
Levittown, New York, in 1948. a television series that ran from 1962 to 1968 and starred
Lucille Ball, who had also experienced divorce, from
Desi Arnaz, just a few months before Kampen's book was published. Producers re-wrote Ball's character, Lucille Carmichael, as a widow, but the show portrayed
Vivian Vance's character, Vivian Bagley, as a divorcée. Kampen lived in Connecticut until 1988, when she moved to California. She died February 1, 1998, of breast cancer at the age of 75. ==Select bibliography==