Image: Meredith Vieira
Andrew Eccles  /  NBC
TODAY TODAY

Meredith Vieira has been co-anchor of NBC News’ TODAY since September 13, 2006.

She also serves as host of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,” a position she’s held since 2002, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in August 2009. Vieira had been moderator of ABC's “The View” since the show's inception in 1997. She started at ABC in 1993 when she joined their news division as Chief Correspondent of “Turning Point,” which debuted in March 1994 and where she earned her seventh Emmy Award.

Prior to that, Vieira spent more than a decade at CBS News, where she garnered five Emmy Awards for her work as a correspondent on news magazines “60 Minutes” and “West 57th.” From 1989 to 1991 she was a co-editor of “60 Minutes.” In addition she won an Emmy for the “60 Minutes” report, Thy Brother's Keeper, a story on Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust. After two successful seasons, and pregnant with her second child, Vieira left “60 Minutes.”

Vieira also frequently anchored the “CBS Morning News” and was contributing national correspondent on the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.” In June 1991, she became contributing correspondent for the CBS News primetime series “Verdict,” reporting on courtroom trials.

Before joining “60 Minutes,” she had been a principal correspondent for CBS News’ “West 57th,” since its premiere in August 1985. In 1989 she received four Emmy Awards for stories she reported on “West 57th” during its 1987-88 season. Vieira joined CBS News as a reporter in its Chicago bureau in January 1982. She was named a correspondent in 1984 and covered Sen. Alan Cranston's presidential bid, the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco and, as a correspondent, election night 1984.

Before joining CBS News, she was a reporter for WCBS-TV for three years, the CBS-owned television station in New York City. Her assignments included the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, the trial of Jean Harris in 1981 and a series on child molestation that earned her a Front Page Award from the Newswoman's Club of New York. She also served as a substitute anchor on the station's news broadcasts. Previously she was a reporter and anchor at WJAR-TV in Providence, Rhode Island. She began her career as a news announcer for WORC-Radio in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1975.

Heavily involved with numerous philanthropic organizations, Vieira is a frequent contributor to several charitable foundations. In May 2001, she received the Safe Horizon Champion Award and from City of Hope the Woman of the Year Award. She has also been honored by the Anti-Defamation League. In April 2004, she received the Mother of the Year Award from The Pajama Program, which collects and distributes bedtime books and pajamas to underprivileged children.

Vieira shares a Dec. 30 birthday with co-anchor Matt Lauer . A native of Providence, Rhode Island, Vieira received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. She and her husband and their three children live in New York.

© 2011 MSNBC Interactive.  Reprints

  1. Image: Meredith Vieira
    Andrew Eccles / NBC
    Jump to text

    Meredith Vieira has been co-anchor of NBC News’ ...