What Is Meredith Vieira's Net Worth and Salary?
Meredith Vieira is an American television personality and broadcast journalist who has a net worth of $45 million. Meredith Vieira is most recognizable for her former roles as moderator of the popular daytime talk show "The View" and co-host of "Today." Meredith has also hosted the game shows "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "25 Words or Less." She hosted the daytime talk show "The Meredith Vieira Show" from 2014 to 2016.
Meredith Vieira Salary
How much did Meredith Vieira make per year hosting NBC's "Today"? At her peak, she earned an annual salary of $11 million.
Early life
Meredith Vieira was born Meredith Louise Vieira on December 30, 1953, in Providence, Rhode Island. Her parents, Mary and Edwin, were first-generation Portuguese Americans. Mary raised their four children while Edwin worked as a medical doctor. Vieira means "scallop" in Portuguese, signaling her family's history that ties back to Faial Island. She attended a Quaker primary and high school in Providence. In her junior year of high school, Vieira scored 1330 on the SAT, a very high score for that grade. After graduating, she went to Tufts University. In 1975, she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English.
Early Career
Vieira began her broadcast career in 1975 as a newscaster for radio station WORC in Worchester, Massachusetts. She worked her way up into having a larger role in television broadcasting, and in 1979, she got a job working as an investigative reporter in the newsroom at WCBS-TV in New York City. In 1982, she transferred to CBS and worked out of their Chicago office as a news reporter. Meredith went on to be a correspondent for "West 57th," a specialty investigative news show on CBS, from 1985 to 1989, and she hosted "60 Minutes" from 1989 until becoming pregnant with her second child in 1991. Prior to leaving the network in 1993, Vieira co-hosted the CBS Morning News. She left to join ABC as the chief correspondent of the news special program "Turning Point." While working for ABC, Meredith became the host of the Lifetime biographical series "Intimate Portrait" in 1995 and remained with the show until it ended in 2004.
"The View" and Subsequent Work
In 1997, Vieira was asked to act as moderator for ABC's new daytime talk show, "The View." As moderator, she opened and closed the show and introduced the topics that the hosts would debate. She has stated that her role on "The View" came about because she was a reporter who didn't want to travel, which was a limiting factor in the jobs she was willing to take. Meredith served as moderator until leaving the show in 2006 to work on "Today."
Continuing to build on her career as a television host, Vieira became the host and co-producer of the syndicated version of the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in 2002. During her time as host, she won two daytime Emmy awards in 2005 and 2009, making her the second woman after Betty White to win an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Game Show Host. She hosted the show for eleven seasons until departing in 2013 to pursue other projects.
In 2006, Vieira accepted an offer from NBC to take Katie Couric's position as co-host with Matt Lauer on "Today." At NBC, she sometimes served as anchor of the popular show "Dateline," and she hosted "Today" onsite at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the 2012 London Summer Olympics, and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
Both Vieira and co-host Matt Lauer were criticized for their bumbling and disjointed coverage of the opening ceremony at the 2012 London Olympics. In, 2013 she announced that she would begin hosting her own talk show that would air the following year. "The Meredith Vieira Show" began its run in the fall of 2014 and ended two years later with NBC citing a decline in ratings as the reason for the program's cancellation.
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Other Work
In addition to her television hosting, Vieira has acted in a number of feature films with the most notable being the 2010 hit "Shrek Forever After." Her debut was in the 2004 film "Stepford Wives," and in 2010, she appeared in the comedy "Get Him to the Greek." She acted as co-host of PBS' weeklong coverage of Prince Harry's wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018. The next year, Meredith returned to daytime television as host of the Fox game show "25 Words or Less," in which contestants are paired with celebrities to guess a list of five words using twenty-five words or less as the title suggests. She has appeared as herself in television shows such as "30 Rock," "House of Cards," and "Orange is the New Black." She was a producer of the 2011 drama "The Return." Vieira's other producer credit is for the documentary "The Woman Who Wasn't There," which is about a woman with a riveting 9/11 survival story who became head of a 9/11 charity organization until it was revealed that she was not even in New York at the time of the attack. The film received an Emmy nomination and was widely viewed.
Personal Life
While working at CBS, Vieira met journalist Richard M. Cohen, and the two married in June 1986. Cohen has a rich journalistic and television career, but he has suffered from numerous health issues. He has multiple sclerosis and has overcome colon cancer twice. Richard won three Emmys over the course of his career, and his last job was as a senior producer for CNN and CBS News. The couple has three children, and their son Gabe followed his parents' footsteps and became a reporter. Gabe works for CNN and is based out of the network's Washington, D.C. bureau.
Real Estate
Meredith and Richard have owned a home in Westchester County, New York, a penthouse in New York City, and a house in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. They paid $8.5 million for their NYC penthouse back in December 2014. The 4-bedroom penthouse is located in the famed Eldorado building, which has been home to celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Moby, Bruce Willis, Ron Howard, and Michael J. Fox.
Their Westchester property, a 2.1-acre estate in the town of Irvington, New York, was acquired in 2000 for $2.1 million.
Their Hollywood Hills home was acquired in 2012 for $1.15 million.
