Tom Brokaw Biography
Tom Brokaw is a retired network television journalist and novelist from the United States. From 1976 until 1981, he was the co-host of The Today Show with Jane Pauley, and then for 22 years, he was the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News.
Tom Brokaw Age
Brokaw is 82 years old as of 2022. He was born Thomas John Brokaw on 6 February 1940 in Webster, South Dakota, United States.
Tom Brokaw Height
Brokaw stands at a height of 5 feet 7 inches (1.70m).
Tom Brokaw Family
Brokaw was born to Eugenia “Jean” Brokaw and Anthony Orville “Red” Brokaw, who worked in sales and as a post-office clerk. He was the eldest of their three sons and was named after Thomas Conley, his maternal great-grandfather.
Although the origin of the name Brokaw is disputed, his father was a descendent of Huguenot immigrants Bourgon and Catherine Broucard, and his mother was Irish-American. Richard P. Brokaw, his paternal great-grandfather, founded Bristol, South Dakota, and the Brokaw House, a tiny hotel that was the town’s first construction. Brokaw’s father worked for the Army Corps of Engineers as a construction foreman. During Brokaw’s early youth, he worked at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot and assisted in the construction of Fort Randall Dam; his job frequently necessitated the family to relocate throughout South Dakota.
Tom Brokaw Wife
Brokaw has been married to author Meredith Lynn Auld since 1962. Jennifer, Andrea, and Sarah are their three daughters. Brokaw and his wife spend a lot of time at their ranch, which they bought in 1989 near Livingston, Montana.
Tom Brokaw Cancer/Health / Tom Brokaw Multiple Myeloma
Brokaw was hospitalized on September 6, 2012, after appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He then tweeted that he was “fine” and that his ailment was caused by taking half a tablet of Ambien in the morning by accident. At the Mayo Clinic in August 2013, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable blood disease. Brokaw and his doctors are “very encouraged” by his improvement. Throughout his treatments, he continued to work for NBC. Brokaw stated that his cancer had gone into remission on December 21, 2014.
Tom Brokaw Salary
Brokaw earns an annual salary of $5 Million.
Tom Brokaw Net Worth
Brokaw has an estimated net worth of $85 Million.
Tom Brokaw After Nightly News
Brokaw continued at NBC as a Special Correspondent after leaving the anchor chair, making periodic stories for Nightly News. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, he worked as an NBC commentator and moderated the second presidential debate at Belmont University between Barack Obama and John McCain. He worked as a documentary reporter for the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, and in 2006, he delivered one of the eulogies during former President Gerald R. Ford’s state funeral.
Brokaw acted as the announcer on June 13, 2008, when NBC halted its regular programming to report the tragic death of NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert. A week later, NBC announced that Brokaw would take over as interim anchor of Meet the Press. In December 2008, he was succeeded by David Gregory.
The Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Rescue Committee, and the Mayo Clinic all had Brokaw on their boards of directors. He is also a trustee of the University of South Dakota, the Norton Simon Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the International Rescue Committee, as well as a member of the Howard University School of Communications Board of Visitors. He also does the voiceover for a University of Iowa commercial that airs on TV during Iowa Hawkeyes sporting events. Brokaw began anchoring The Boys in the Hall, a Fox Sports Net baseball documentary series, in 2011. Brokaw was the star of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s annual Christmas concert, which drew an audience of 84,000 people in December 2012. In December 2013, the concert, dubbed Home for the Holidays, was broadcast nationally on television.
The Brokaw News Center, a new broadcast facility on the Universal Studios Hollywood lot named after Brokaw, debuted in April 2014. KNBC-TV, Telemundo-owned and operated station KVEA, and the NBC News Los Angeles bureau are all housed in the same building. President Barack Obama awarded Brokaw the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in November 2014. “The chronicler of the Greatest Generation…we salute him as one of our nation’s greatest journalists,” said the citation.
Brokaw delivered one of the eulogies for former First Lady Nancy Reagan at her burial on March 11, 2016. As a reporter and then presenter, he discussed his relationship with both the Reagans. Brokaw, along with Ecuadorian news anchor Alfonso Espinosa de Los Monteros, who has been with Ecuavisa since 1967, announced his retirement from NBC on January 22, 2021, after 55 years on the network. Brokaw is one of the few news anchors in the world who has spent the most time on the same news network.
Tom Brokaw NBC Nightly News
Brokaw was the first broadcast journalist to cover the fall of the Berlin Wall in English. Brokaw interviewed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on American television. From 1993 to 1994, he hosted a prime-time newsmagazine called Now, which was later absorbed into the multi-night NBC show Dateline. In 1993, in response to David Letterman’s monologue involving jokes about NBC, Brokaw stepped on stage and exclaimed, “These last two jokes are the intellectual property of NBC!” NBC agreed to pay Jewell $500,000. Despite the fact that the network stuck by its story, the network agreed to pay Jewell $500,000.
He joined Katie Couric and Matt Lauer for the live attack on the World Trade Center’s South Tower on September 11, 2001, and anchored the rest of the day until after midnight. He testified about the anthrax assaults before the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism in 2008.
