From becoming a first-time wife and mother in her 40s, to landing her own talk show,
Tamron Hall has been through a lot — and that isn't all of it.
From her early years in broadcast journalism to her Today departure, this is the untold
truth of Tamron Hall.
On a 2016 episode of Today, the show's morning crew wasn't expecting one of their own to
drop a bombshell one morning.
Savannah Guthrie, Tamron Hall's then-co-host on Today, brought up a recent Today.com article
she'd read about a woman who'd changed her baby daughter's name when she was three months
old.
Hall said that happened to her, telling her co-hosts that she was originally going to
be called Maggie May.
"And my mother said, 'No way,' and made a little switcheroo to Tamron.”
Hall explained that her grandfather chose the name in honor of her grandmother and that
she has friends who call her Maggie May Hall.
Tamron Hall may be a city girl now, but she's actually a country girl at heart.
Growing up in a small town, she had big dreams.
In order to accomplish them, Hall enrolled at Temple University, located in Philadelphia.
Speaking to Philadelphia Style in 2019, she shared details about the weekend her parents
first drove her to school, saying,
"It was exactly 1,689 miles from the doorstep of my home in Luling, Texas.
[...] My mother and father drove me to college in a brown conversion van."
Hall graduated in 1992.
These days, she credits her experience for taking her from an insecure small-town girl
with big dreams to a confident, independent woman who's made those dreams a reality.
She told Temple magazine,
"I'm the girl who came to Temple never having seen Philadelphia.
This city gave me my soul.
This university gave me my confidence."
The proud alum even welcomed a Temple dance team to perform on an episode of her talk
show in 2020.
"Okay ladies, now let's get in formation!"
[girl stomps]
For some people, it takes a while to figure out what they want to do for a career.
However, others, like Tamron Hall, know the answer to that question early on.
In a 2015 interview with Temple magazine, she explained how telling stories was almost
in her genes.
She said,
"It's my career, it's my path, it's my destiny — it's what I believe I was meant to do.
I believe I was meant to be a journalist."
During her time in college, as she told Philadelphia Style, Hall interned with 6ABC's Action News
and accepted a job as a reporter back home in Texas after graduation, before making the
move to Chicago and later New York to work for NBC and MSNBC.
Even after working in journalism for decades, Hall never takes her work and the opportunities
she's been given for granted.
She said,
"I don't take it lightly when people agree to give me an interview or allow me to tell
their story.
That's why I got in this business.
I love hearing about someone else's journey.
[...] It's why I do this, it's why I want to do this and it's why I will do this for
the rest of my career."
Chicago is especially meaningful to Tamron Hall.
After leaving Dallas in 1997, she spent the next decade in Chicago as a reporter and later
anchor for Fox 32.
On Live with Kelly and Ryan, Hall spoke about her early days, saying,
"I worked my way up from a reporter on the street."
"I've actually been on TV since I was 18."
In 2021, Hall learned that her talk show would begin airing on WLS-Channel 7 in Chicago.
Speaking to ABC7 Eyewitness News host Hosea Sanders, she said,
"Can you believe [...] 24 years ago, I moved to Chicago and now my daytime show is coming
to the greatest station in the city?
It's crazy, I can't believe it."
Hall even credited the city for giving her a backbone, sharing that she was taught all
about different cultures from living in Chicago for a decade.
She added that her show would appeal to Chicago viewers because she understands where they're
coming from.
"The common thread of life is food, family, and our history, and I learned that in Chicago."
In an interview with Essence, Tamron Hall shared an early experience.
While watching TV with her father, he pointed out Iola Johnson, the first Black news anchor
on a Dallas news station.
He told her, quote, "that can be you," she remembered, adding,
"When Connie Chung took her place in history, he said, 'That could be you.'"
And it was.
According to Essence, Hall's turn on the Today show was a historic one: She was the show's
first-ever Black female co-host.
Upon landing the job, she said,
"Now I'm a part of this for women, for Black women, for all of us.
And I'm just taken aback by it.
I can't even describe to you how it feels."
And, just as Hall was inspired by trailblazers like Johnson and Chung in her early years,
she herself has served as an inspiration to others.
Nadia Crow, the first Black anchor to be hired in Utah, told The Salt Lake Tribune that when
she was a child, she saw Hall on TV and in person, and Hall impressed her.
In 2015, Tamron Hall spoke with Temple magazine about her then-current job: co-hosting the
9 a.m. hour of the long-running Today show on NBC and anchoring NewsNation with Tamron
Hall on MSNBC.
She told the magazine,
"I'm just thankful that I happen to be on one of the greatest morning shows ever."
Just two years later, Hall was at a crossroads in her career, after being ousted from the
9 a.m. hour of Today to make room for Megyn Kelly, who, only a short time later, parted
ways with NBC herself.
Hall left entirely, and she later told a live audience at a summit that she found herself
at home for 18 months.
She explained her decision to People, saying,
"I knew I would have to trust my gut and that I could be a part of something that would
reflect who I am as a person, as a journalist, as a woman."
In yet another interview, Hall got even more personal, telling USA Today,
"I had some suspicions [...] but no one wants to lose their job.
It wasn't about who I was losing it to — it was like a relationship where you're putting
in 100% and the person who's putting in less has the nerve to break up with you."
It's not always easy to remain close with coworkers when you no longer work together
every day.
But Tamron Hall has been able to remain close with at least one of her former colleagues,
Al Roker.
In an episode of her talk show, she even revealed how Roker came to her rescue one day when
her son had an accident requiring surgery, and she was panicking.
Hall explained that she called Roker, who arrived quickly.
She said,
"Within seconds, I met the doctor, I'm in the surgery center, and everything worked
out just beyond what I could've expected.
This is what this man brings to my life!"
"Please welcome my talented friend, Mr. Al Roker.”
No one was more excited than Tamron Hall when she returned to TV — two years after leaving
Today — with her own talk show, Tamron Hall, no less.
Kim Godwin, the president of ABC News, described the show in a news memo as delivering, quote,
"award-winning, empowering stories that have covered celebrity interviews, topical and
hard-hitting issues."
She continued,
"Their thought-provoking segments have provided daytime viewers with entertainment, news and
information, delivered by a distinguished and celebrated broadcast journalist."
And, these days, Hall is the one calling the shots, as she serves as an executive producer
of the show.
In March 2020, Hall hired Candi Carter, a former producer on The View and The Oprah
Winfrey Show to serve as producer alongside her, but the Daily Mail reported in October
2021 that Carter had quit.
Tamron Hall famously became a first-time mom in 2019 at the age of 48.
Though this feat was remarkable in and of itself, Hall managed to keep her pregnancy
a secret until she was 32 weeks along.
However, Hall had a very logical reason for keeping mum.
She told People,
"I was high-risk, not just because of my age, but there were other medical factors too."
Although her doctor told her to feel free to share whatever she wants, the journalist
wasn't mentally prepared for the possible fallout.
She told People,
"I was terrified I would lose this baby and I would have to go back and tell everyone
that now it was bad news, and after this pregnancy had gone so far."
Hall officially revealed her joyous news to her Instagram followers on March 4, 2019.
Alongside a photo of her ever-growing bump, she wrote,
"So, it's clear a daytime talk show isn't the only thing I've been trying to produce!
There have been many tears, but today I embrace the smiles.
My husband Steven and I are beyond excited!"
Her son, Moses, was born on April 25, 2019.
Tamron Hall managed to keep another aspect of her personal life private — not just
from the public but also from her own mother!
Or at least that's what she thought.
While guest-hosting Live with Kelly and Ryan alongside Ryan Seacrest in 2019, she discussed
her exciting year, which included getting married and having a baby.
Hall shared the adorable story of how she met her husband, music producer Steven Greener,
whom she referred to as the love of her life.
She explained that the two were acquaintances who kept running into each other.
Hall noted that, each time, Greener would exclaim,
"What are the odds?!"
One day, Hall ran into him at a pool in Los Angeles, where he finally asked her out for
pizza.
"And we moved in together, I mean, like three weeks later."
Hall admitted that when her mom first came over, she had Greener move all his things
out and stay at a friend's house just so her mom wouldn't know!
She said,
"Well my mother, my mother is a Southern old-school, so I kept saying he was visiting."
But Hall's mother later told her she knew anyway.
It's clear that Tamron Hall is a fashionista.
Before she began working with a personal stylist in 2015, though, she used to get fashion tips
from an unlikely source: Prince.
Hall spoke to Vogue about her friendship with the pop star.
In fact, up until the singer's untimely death in 2016, Prince would help her pick out what
to wear for each show.
She told Vogue that before every show, she would send him photos of what she might wear.
This is actually how a photo of Hall showed up on the cover of Prince's single "If Eye
Could Get Ur Attention" in 2015.
"Then I sent him a selfie one day, and he then stole my selfie and used it as the cover
for his single."
So, how did the veteran journalist and the iconic popstar become close in the first place?
She told MSNBC that Prince reached out to her, and the two became close after realizing
they shared a lot in common, everything from news to fashion to family.
Hall certainly felt the void left by the pop star after his death in 2016.
She said of his death,
"I'm a lucky person that I have had a friend like this.
But it is not lost on me that he was much more than music and I think that people know
that."
In 2019, Tamron Hall made her soap opera debut when she appeared on an episode of the long-running
ABC soap General Hospital.
The experience was especially exciting for Hall, who would watch the show with her family.
She shared her enthusiasm with ABC7.
"The legacy of 'General Hospital,' 56 years!
Now I'm like inside Kelly's Diner!"
And, you'd bet that Hall would apply the same work ethic she does in her day job to her
soap opera debut.
She said of the experience,
"I was up at 5 a.m. this morning reading over the script.
I fell asleep with the script beside me in the bed."
Hall watched the scene for the first time along with her live talk show studio audience.
"By the way, I never watch myself on TV.
I don't even watch our show."
In the scene, Hall enters Kelly's Diner.
"I don't believe it.
Kelly's Diner — I've always wanted to eat here!"
We know that Tamron Hall loves telling stories.
But now, she's embarked on a totally new kind of story to tell: In April 2021, the TV journalist
announced her first book!
And, while you may think that, as a journalist, it's likely the book is a memoir or something
news-related, it turns out that's not exactly the case.
Hall's first novel was As the Wicked Watch, which is the first in a series!
She has promoted the book often on Instagram, at one point writing in a post,
"My first novel!!
This is [four] years in the making."
And on September 21, 2021, Hall made an exciting announcement to her followers when she revealed
she'd be reading pages from her book online!
She wrote on Instagram, alongside the video announcement,
"You've asked for me to read some of the juicy pages of my first novel, so tomorrow we're
starting #WickedWednesday!!
See ya then!"
Considering its author, we bet this novel is wicked good.
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