Keith Olbermann Biography
Keith Olbermann is a sports and political analyst and writer from the United States. Olbermann worked in sports journalism for the first 20 years of his career. In the 1980s, he worked as a sports correspondent for CNN and local TV and radio stations, winning the California Associated Press’ Best Sportscaster award three times.
Keith Olbermann Age
Olbermann is 63 years old as of 2022. He was born Keith Theodore Olbermann on January 27, 1959, in New York City, U.S.
Keith Olbermann Height
Olbermann stands at a height of 5 feet 7 inches (1.70m).
Keith Olbermann Family
Olbermann was the son of preschool teacher Marie Katherine (née Charbonier) and commercial architect Theodore Olbermann. He was born in Germany. Olbermann and his younger sister Jenna, who was born in 1968, were raised in a Unitarian home in the Westchester hamlet of Hastings-on-Hudson. In adjacent Tarrytown, he attended the Hackley School, a private Ivy League Preparatory school.
Olbermann developed an early passion for baseball, which he inherited from his mother, a lifelong New York Yankees fan. He wrote about baseball card collecting as a teenager and was published in numerous sportscard collecting magazines in the mid-1970s.
Keith Olbermann Wife
Olbermann is a single man. From 2006 to 2009, he lived with WNBC’s Katy Tur for three years. Tur is now married and has her own family.
Keith Olbermann Education
He enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16 after graduating from Hackley in 1975. Olbermann worked as the sports director for WVBR, a student-run commercial radio station in Ithaca, during his college years. Olbermann earned a bachelor’s degree in communication from Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1979.
Keith Olbermann Illness
Olbermann has a slight case of celiac disease and suffers from restless legs syndrome. He also sustained a brain injury while leaping into a New York City Subway train in August 1980. His equilibrium was permanently disrupted as a result of the brain injury, and he avoided driving. As an honorary board member, he supports the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation alongside Bob Costas.
Keith Olbermann Father’s Death
Theodore Olbermann died on March 13, 2010, from complications following colon surgery the previous September. His mother had passed just a few months prior. Olbermann had taken a leave of absence shortly before his father’s death to spend time with him, occasionally recording segments to air at the beginning of shows that Lawrence O’Donnell guest-hosted in his absence, giving his thoughts on the state of the American health-care system and updating viewers on his father’s condition.
Keith Olbermann Salary
Olbermann earns an annual salary of $4 Million.
Keith Olbermann Net Worth
Olbermann has an estimated net worth of $25 Million.
Keith Olbermann Feud with Bill O’Reilly
Olbermann repeatedly gave Bill O’Reilly, host of Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, the dubious accolade after starting Countdown’s “Worst Person in the World” segment in July 2005. The feud between the anchors began with Olbermann’s extensive coverage of a 2004 sexual harassment lawsuit filed against O’Reilly by former Fox News Channel producer Andrea Mackris, during which Olbermann asked Countdown viewers to help fund the purchase of obscene audio tapes allegedly held by Mackris.
With the beginning of Countdown’s “Worst Person in the World” segment in 2005, the animosity between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly began. Olberman donned an O’Reilly mask and gave a Nazi salute at the Television Critics Association in 2006, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to write a letter of protest. According to a 2009 New York Times article, the feud was “probably the bloodiest media feud of the decade,” and it ended abruptly in June 2009 due to orders from NBC and Fox officials.
Keith Olbermann Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Countdown started on MSNBC on March 31, 2003, in the 8 p.m. ET time period previously occupied by Phil Donahue and, temporarily, Lester Holt’s shows. The format of Countdown was Olbermann ranking the five most important news stories of the day, or “things my producers force me to cover.” The first few stories were usually on government, politics, and world affairs, while the second and first segments were usually lighter stuff. Olbermann and Chris Matthews co-anchored MSNBC’s coverage of fellow NBC News staffer Tim Russert’s death on June 13, 2008.
Olbermann signed a four-year contract deal worth an estimated $30 million in November 2008, according to reports. He employed a technique similar to that of legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in conjunction with the Iran Hostage Crisis during the last six years of Countdown.
Keith Olbermann The Closer with Keith Olbermann/The Resistance
On September 12, 2016, GQ magazine announced that Olbermann would host a web series chronicling the 2016 US Presidential Election as a special reporter. The Closer with Keith Olbermann was a GQ.com series that aired twice weekly. After Donald Trump’s victory, it was renamed The Resistance. It has approximately 170 million views on GQ’s YouTube and Facebook pages as of March 2017. Trump is F*cking Crazy (This is Not a Joke), a hardcover book by Olbermann published by Penguin Random House in mid-October 2017, including 50 articles based on The Resistance commentaries.