Chuck Todd, after nine years as moderator on NBC's Meet the Press – which has been on the air since 1947 – is departing the show's news desk. Meet the Press is television's longest-running regular show.
Succeeding him will be Kristen Welker, NBC's chief White House correspondent, who also serves as co-anchor (alongside Peter Alexander) of Weekend Today, the Saturday edition of the Today Show.
She will step in as the show's moderator, its 13th in their 76-year history, at the end of the summer in September.
Chuck, 50, announced the news during the concluding remarks of the Sunday, June 4 installment of the show. He became moderator of Meet the Press, its 12th, back in 2014, when he replaced David Greggory, who himself replaced Tim Russert following his 2008 passing.
During his departing statement, he acknowledged how many leaders tend to "overstay their welcome" and that he would rather leave "a little bit too soon than stay a tad too long." A longtime political journalist in Washington, he noted in his remarks: "I've let work consume me for nearly 30 years."
He added: "I can't remember the last time I didn't wake up before 5 or 6 a.m., and as I've watched too many friends and family let work consume them before it was too late, I promised my family I wouldn't do that."
Chuck has been married to Kristian Denny, a communications professional and co-founder of Maverick Strategies and Mail, since 2001. They live in Arlington, Virginia, with their two children, Harrison and Margaret.
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President of editorial for NBC News Rebecca Blumenstein and the network's senior vice president of politics, Carrie Budoff Brown, revealed in a memo that Chuck would remain part of the NBC family – he first joined as NBC News political director in 2007 – as chief political analyst of the network.
"Through his penetrating interviews with many of the most important newsmakers, the show has played an essential role in politics and policy, routinely made front-page news, and framed the thinking in Washington and beyond," they said in a memo, per the New York Times.
Kristen, 46, first became NBC White House correspondent in December 2011, and regularly anchors at MSNBC, plus has occasional appearances both on NBC Nightly News and on the Today Show. She became the regular co-anchor of Weekend Today in January of 2020.
She has been part of the NBC family since 1997, when she became an intern for Today at age 21, while she studied at Harvard, from where she graduated the following year with a major in history. She joined the network in an official capacity in 2005 at affiliate WCAU in Philadelphia, later joining NBC News in 2010 as a correspondent based at the NBC News West Coast Headquarters in Burbank, California.
Kristen has been married to marketing executive John Hughes since 2017, and in June 2021, they welcomed their first child, daughter Margot Lane Welker Hughes, via surrogacy.
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