35 Facts About Meredith Vieira

Meredith Louise Vieira was born on December 30,1953 and is an American broadcast journalist and television personality.

Meredith Vieira is best known as the original moderator of the daytime talk show The View, the original host of the syndicated daytime version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and as co-host of the NBC morning news program Today.

Meredith Vieira was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in nearby East Providence, the daughter of Mary Elsie, a homemaker, and Edwin Meredith Vieira, a medical doctor, both first-generation Portuguese Americans.

Meredith Vieira is the youngest of four children, with three older brothers.

Meredith Vieira was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but she has stated in recent interviews that she has "spirituality, not a religion".

Meredith Vieira attended the Lincoln School, a Quaker all-girls offshoot of Moses Brown School in Providence, graduating in 1971.

Meredith Vieira graduated with a degree in English from Tufts University in 1975.

Meredith Vieira began a career in television working as a local reporter and anchor at WJAR-TV in Providence, eventually making her way into the newsroom at WCBS-TV in New York City where she was an investigative reporter from 1979 to 1982.

Meredith Vieira first gained national recognition as a CBS reporter based in its Chicago bureau from 1982 to 1984.

Meredith Vieira later became a correspondent for nationwide news-magazine shows including West 57th and 60 Minutes.

Meredith Vieira moved to ABC initially as one of six regular correspondents for the news-magazine show Turning Point, and was the host of the Lifetime Network's show Intimate Portrait, which debuted on January 3,1995, and ran until August 28,2004.

Meredith Vieira served as the original moderator and co-host of ABC's daytime talk show The View from its debut on August 11,1997, until June 9,2006.

On her final episode of The View, Meredith Vieira's co-hosts gave her a roast to commemorate her departure.

Meredith Vieira explained what led her to become The View's moderator in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by making the following statement:.

Meredith Vieira said the interview was taken out of context.

Meredith Vieira became the first host of the American syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on September 16,2002; prior to that, American audiences had known it as a primetime show on ABC hosted by Regis Philbin.

Meredith Vieira won two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game Show Host for her hosting duties on Millionaire ; as such, she is the second woman ever to win an Emmy Award in this category, and the first to win multiple times.

ABC originally offered Meredith Vieira hosting duties on the syndicated Millionaire to sweeten one of her re-negotiations for The View.

On January 10,2013, Meredith Vieira announced that after eleven seasons with the syndicated Millionaire, throughout which she had hosted more than 1,800 episodes and offered a vast multitude of contestants a combined total of over $70,000,000, she would be leaving the show as part of an effort to focus on projects in her career.

Meredith Vieira finalized taping of her last episodes with the show in November 2012.

Meredith Vieira accepted an offer to succeed Katie Couric as co-anchor of Today on April 6,2006, the day after Couric announced that she would depart the show to become anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Meredith Vieira hosted the show with Matt Lauer from September 13,2006, through June 8,2011, becoming a contributing anchor for Dateline NBC.

Meredith Vieira continued as host of Millionaire while appearing on Today.

Meredith Vieira appeared during the entire third hour during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the Barack Obama inauguration on January 20,2009.

Meredith Vieira announced on May 9,2011, that she would depart as co-host in the following month, but would remain with Today in the role of special correspondent.

Meredith Vieira has remained with NBC in a minimized role and became a contributor to Dateline NBC and a correspondent on Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Meredith Vieira was one of the hosts for NBC's coverage of the 2012 London Summer Olympics.

Meredith Vieira co-hosted the opening ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics with Matt Lauer, and was slated to provide coverage during the two weeks of the games.

In July 2013, Vieira announced that she would begin hosting her own syndicated afternoon daytime talk show, The Meredith Vieira Show, starting in September 2014, produced by NBCUniversal Television Distribution.

In May 2018, Meredith Vieira co-hosted Royal Wedding Watch with Matt Baker, PBS's weeklong coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Meredith Vieira returned to daytime TV in the fall of 2019 as host of the syndicated game show 25 Words or Less from Fox Television Stations.

Meredith Vieira and Cohen have three children; their younger son, Gabe Cohen, is a reporter based in Washington state.

Meredith Vieira joined 60 Minutes in 1989, following the birth of her first child.

Meredith Vieira turned down opportunities to co-host CBS's The Early Show and ABC's Good Morning America in the mid-1990s when her children were young.

Meredith Vieira discusses her family and career decisions in the book Divided Lives: The Public and Private Struggles of Three American Women by Elsa Walsh.