Willie Geist Biography
Willie Geist is an American journalist and television personality. He is the co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and the anchor of Willie Geist’s Sunday Today. On both the weekday and Saturday editions of Today, Geist routinely fills in as a fill-in anchor.
Willie Geist Age
Geist is 47 years old as of 2022. He was born William Russell Geist on 3 May 1975 in Evanston, Illinois, United States.
Willie Geist Height
Geist stands at a height of 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m).
Willie Geist Family
Geist is the son of Bill Geist, a newspaper columnist and radio journalist, and Jody Geist, a social worker. Libby Geist Wildes, the Academy Award-winning documentary film producer of O.J.: Made in America and The Last Dance, is Geist’s older brother. He is the great-grandson of Herbie Lewis, a former Detroit Red Wings star and Hockey Hall of Famer.
Willie Geist Wife
Geist married Christina Sharkey, his high school love, on May 24, 2003, in Humacao, Puerto Rico. Lucie Joy is the couple’s daughter, while George William is their son. He is self-employed.
Willie Geist Education
Geist met his future wife, Christina Sharkey, at George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. They started dating while he was captain of both the basketball and football teams at Ridgewood High School, where he won the state football championship in 1991. He was inducted into the National Honor Society and New Jersey Boys State. Geist earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science and French from Vanderbilt University in 1997 when he also served as the editor of the campus newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler.
Willie Geist Salary
Geist earns an annual salary of $5 Million.
Willie Geist Net Worth
Geist has an estiated net worth of $14 Million.
Willie Geist Career
Geist began his career as an editor and producer for CNN Sports Illustrated before moving on to CNN Sports as a field producer and reporter, covering the Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, and The Masters.
After Don Imus was sacked in late April 2007, Geist began filling in as a co-host on MSNBC’s 6–9 a.m. morning time slot. In September 2007, Geist joined Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as permanent co-hosts of Morning Joe. Geist began anchoring his own 30-minute show, Way Too Early with Willie Geist, in late July 2009, which airs at 5:30 a.m. on MSNBC, directly before Morning Joe. Geist started filling in for Matt Lauer as host and newsreader of the Today Show in 2010. Geist left Way Too Early in November 2012 to become an official co-host of Today. Geist was named the only host of the new Sunday Today in April of 2016. Since 2010, Geist has also contributed to the coverage of every Olympic Games by NBC Sports and NBC News.
On the morning of June 12, 2016, Geist hosted NBC’s hour-long coverage of the Orlando nightclub shooting. In an NBC News Special Report that was broadcast across the United States, Geist remained on the air for seven hours straight. On August 4, 2019, Geist and Sunday TODAY won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for similar coverage following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. In addition to his political interviews on Morning Joe throughout the week, Geist has established himself as a respected long-form profile interviewer of the world’s most famous people on Sunday TODAY.
Geist is the anchor of the popular Sunday Sitdown podcast, which contains uncut versions of his Sunday TODAY broadcast profile interviews. Willie Geist went on to do voice work in Kung Fu Panda 3 as Sum, opposite Al Roker’s Dim, in which their characters are twin panda brothers who are related to Po, and he has appeared in a number of other films and television shows. He appears on Andy Cohen’s late-night Bravo show “Watch What Happens Live” on a regular basis, where he is frequently paired with a Real Housewife. In 2012 and 2017, Geist was featured in People magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” issue. Mikey Day, a Saturday Night Live cast member, plays Geist in jokes about Morning Joe.
Other anchors include Forrest Sawyer, Joan Lunden, Jim Avila, Joan Lunden, Cecily Tynan, Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, Michael Strahan, Lara Spencer, Ginger Zee, David Muir, Amy Robach, Kendis Gibson, Diane Macedo, Rob Nelson, Paula Faris, and Reena Ninan.