Five years after succeeding Katie Couric on NBC’s “Today” show, Meredith Vieira on Monday (5/9) confirmed that she will leave the show in June. Ann Curry will take her place as co-anchor alongside Matt Lauer. Vieira will continue in a new role at NBC News.
“This is a difficult day for me,” Meredith said in an emotional announcement on Today. “I’m going to try to hold myself together here. But after months of personal reflection and private conversations between my family and my friends, I’ve decided to leave Today in June. I’ve really had a great time, but time is one of those weird things; you can never get enough of it. And it just keeps ticking away, and I know that I want to spend more of mine with my husband, Richard, and my kids, Ben, Gabe and Lily.”
Vieira’s husband, former CBS News producer Richard Cohen, suffers from multiple sclerosis and has twice battled cancer. He is the author of “Blindsided : Lifting a Life Above Illness: A Reluctant Memoir,” about living with chronic illness, and “Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, a Chorus of Hope,” profiling five people, including two children, who live with chronic illness. Years earlier he also wrote a book about the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew.
Vieira’s exit from the demands of early morning television had been rumored for some time
NBC News President Steve Capus said that Vieira has “left an indelible imprint on morning television” and added that he is working with her on “developing her next chapter at NBC News.”
Vieira began her career in 1975 doing news at WORC Radio in Worcester, MA, then joined CBS News, where she spent more than a decade. She was than at ABC, becoming one of the original hosts of “The View,” before joining NBC’s Today in 2006 when Couric exited for CBS News. Vieira has also been host of the syndicated game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” since 2002.
Ann Curry, who will move into the co-anchor slot, has been news anchor on Today since 1997 and has substituted on the NBC Nightly News. Natalie Morales, who has co-hosted the third hour of Today, will move to the news chair for the main two hours and she will be succeeded in the third hour by NBC News White House correspondent and MSNBC anchor Savannah Guthrie.
