Meredith Vieira Net Worth, Early and Personal Life, Career

Look no further for Meredith Vieira’s net worth; simply read this article to discover the exact Meredith Vieira’s net worth!

Meredith Louise Vieira is a 65-year-old American broadcast journalist and television personality born on  December 30, 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island, United States.

From 1997 to 2006, she was the first moderator of the daytime talk show The View and the first host of the syndicated daytime version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

As you read this net worth article, you will discover Meredith Vieira’s net worth as well as his biography, career, health issues, other ventures, and so on.

Early Life

Vieira was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and brought up in nearby East Providence, the daughter of homemaker Mary Elsie (Rosa) and medical doctor Edwin Vieira, both first-generation Portuguese Americans.

The family name Vieira translates to “scallop” in Portuguese. They migrated to New England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, settling in and around Providence, Rhode Island.

In  1971, Vieira graduated from the Lincoln School, an all-girls division of Providence’s Moses Brown School. In 1975, she was awarded a bachelor’s degree in English.

Career

Beginnings on radio and local TV from 1975–1982

She started her television career as a local reporter and anchor at WJAR-TV in Providence before moving on to the newsroom at WCBS-TV in New York City, where she started working as an investigative reporter from 1979 to 1982.

CBS News (1982–1993)

From 1982 to 1984, Vieira became well-known across the country as a CBS reporter based in the Chicago bureau. She later worked as a reporter for national newsmagazine shows such as West 57th Street (1985-89) and 60 Minutes (1989–91).

The View (1994–2006)

Vieira joined ABC as one of six regular correspondents for the newsmagazine show Turning Point (1994-99), and she also hosted the Lifetime Network’s show Intimate Portrait.

From August 11, 1997, to June 9, 2006, Vieira was the original moderator and co-host of ABC’s daytime talk show The View. She was in responsible for opening and closing each live episode of the show, introducing “Hot Topics,” guiding conversations, and breaking into commercials. To commemorate her exit, Vieira’s co-hosts gave her a roast on her final episode of The View.

In August 2006, Vieira told Time that she had not even watched The View since she left, aside from the episode in which Star Jones announced her departure. She stated that it was “What happened to it is “very sad”: “I’m proud of the work we did there, but it’s not a good time in the show’s history… It’s difficult to watch. It kind of turned into a joke.” On August 29, 2006, Vieira told the New York Post that The View was not a joke. She claimed that the interview had been taken out of context.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2002–2013)

On September 16, 2002, Vieira became the first host of the American syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; previously, American audiences had known it as a primetime show on ABC hosted by Regis Philbin. The syndicated version was initially offered to Rosie O’Donnell, but she declined almost immediately.

Vieira won two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Game Show Host for her work on Millionaire (one in 2005, the other in 2009), making her the second woman to do so, and the first to win numerous times.

To sweeten one of her re-negotiations for The View, ABC initially offered Vieira hosting responsibilities on the syndicated Millionaire.

When the show was feted by GSN on its 2007 Gameshow Hall of Fame special, one of the show’s executive producers, Leigh Hampton, stated that when the syndicated version was being developed, the production team felt that Philbin could not proceed to host because the show recorded four episodes in a single day and that the team was looking for attributes in a new host: it had to be somebody who would love the contestants and be willing to root for them.

After O’Donnell flatly refused the opportunity to host the syndicated version, the team chose Vieira because she possessed the aforementioned qualities. On the special, Vieira clarified why she chose to host the syndicated Millionaire:

I did the show because I fell in love with it, and, first and foremost, as a parent, there aren’t many shows on television that you can watch as a family.

Prior to hosting the syndicated version of Millionaire, Vieira was a celebrity contestant on the third season of the original primetime version, where she won $250,000 for her selected charitable organization.

Seven and three-quarter years later, she would even turn the screw on Philbin himself, hosting the show’s 10th-anniversary primetime revival finale on August 23, 2009, while giving him the chance to answer one question in order to win $50,000 for his chosen organization, Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx.

On January 10, 2013, Vieira announced that she would be leaving the syndicated Millionaire after eleven seasons, during which she had hosted over 1,800 episodes and offered a vast array of contestants a total of over $70,000,000, as part of an effort to concentrate on other projects in her career. In 2012, she finished taping her final episodes for the show.

Today and The Meredith Vieira Show (2006–2016)

On April 6, 2006, Vieira accepted an offer to replace Katie Couric as co-anchor of Today, the day after Couric announced her exit from the show to become the anchor of the CBS Evening News.

The next day, Vieira announced on The View that she would be leaving the show to co-anchor Today, a role that View co-host and ABC News journalist Barbara Walters had held nearly four decades earlier during her tenure at NBC in the 1960s and 1970s. From September 13, 2006, to June 8, 2011, Vieira co-hosted the show with Matt Lauer, and she also made a significant contribution to Dateline NBC.

While appearing on Today, Vieira did continue to host Millionaire. As part of her agreement with Millionaire, Vieira agreed not to appear on Today during times when the game show was airing on competing stations.

As a result, she was rarely seen on Today in the third or fourth hour. Her first presentation during the third hour came on June 25, 2008, for “Today Throws a Wedding”. She also appeared for the entire third hour of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009.

On May 9, 2011, Vieira revealed that she would step down as co-host the following month, but would remain with Today as a special reporter.

Her last regular co-host presence was on June 8; she returned to the show for the Halloween broadcast on October 31, 2011, and again as a special co-host with Matt Lauer in London, United Kingdom for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.

She stayed on at NBC in a reduced capacity, becoming a contributor to Dateline NBC and a correspondent on Rock Center with Brian Williams. In January 2013, she replaced Kathie Lee Gifford on Today’s fourth hour, alongside Hoda Kotb, and she reported the story Inconceivable on Dateline NBC.

Vieira hosted NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She and co-host Matt Lauer were admonished for their coverage of the opening ceremony on NBC. During the games, Vieira also offered some Today Olympics coverage.

Vieira co-hosted the opening ceremony of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics with Matt Lauer and was arranged to provide coverage throughout the two-week event. On February 14, 2014, she became the first woman to anchor NBC’s prime-time Olympics coverage alone, toggling with Lauer while filling in for an ailing Bob Costas.

Vieira announced in July 2013 that she would begin hosting her own syndicated afternoon daytime talk show, The Meredith Vieira Show, in September 2014, which would be produced by NBCUniversal Television Distribution. The show’s termination was announced on January 4, 2016, after two seasons. The talk show aired 290 episodes from September 8, 2014, to May 20, 2016.

Due to host Hoda  Kotb’s maternity leave, Vieira guest-anchored  Today with Hoda & Jenna for a few episodes in 2019.

Other television work

Vieira co-hosted Royal Wedding Watch with Matt Baker in May 2018, PBS’s weeklong coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.

25 Words or Less (2019–present)

Vieira returned to daytime television in the fall of 2019 as the host of Fox Television Stations’ syndicated game show 25 Words or Less. The show, which is centered on a board game, pairs contestants with celebrities a try to guess a list of five words using no more than 25 words in total.

Personal life

On June 14, 1986, Vieira wedded CBS News journalist Richard M. Cohen.  Cohen has had multiple sclerosis since he was 25 years old, as well as colon cancer twice, once in 1999 and once a year later. Vieira and Cohen have three children, one of whom is a reporter based in Washington state.

Balancing family and career

Vieira joined 60 Minutes after the birth of her first child.   Don Hewitt, 60 Minutes’ executive producer, permitted her to work part-time for two seasons so she could provide care for her child. Following that, she did agree that she would work full-time. After two years, she became pregnant again and asked to continue to work part-time.

Hewitt rejected her request, fired her, and decided to employ someone full-time instead. Her exit from the show made headlines, igniting a national debate about whether women could balance family and career. When her children were young, she declined offers to co-host CBS’s The Early Show and ABC’s Good Morning America in the mid-1990s.

Meredith Vieira’s Net worth

Meredith Vieira is an American television personality and broadcast journalist best known as the moderator of the popular daytime talk show “The View” and then as co-host of “The Today Show” which has a net worth of $45 million.

Summary

Meredith Vieira has been described as a sensational moderator by many, and many people look up to her as a role model.

With the way, things are going, and despite the fact that some people believe her net worth is actually low for her status, Meredith Vieira’s net worth will undoubtedly increase over time.