Tom Brokaw

Thomas John Brokaw, aka Tom Brokaw, celebrates his birthday on the 6th of February and was born in Webster, South Dakota in the United States of America in 1940 as the first son, among three sons, of Anthony Orville Brokaw and Eugenia “Jean”.

His father worked at the Army Corps of Engineers as a construction foreman and because of his father’s job, Brokaw’s family had to shift houses very often. For his high school education, he was sent to study at Yankton Senior High School and while he was only a school student, he served as the American Legion Boys State’s governor in South Dakota.

To pursue higher education, he began studying at the University of Iowa at Iowa but unfortunately, he had to drop out of college the following year. However, he did complete his college education after attending the University of South Dakota and received a Bachelor in Arts (B.A.) degree in Political Science.

Brokaw shares his marital life with Meredith Lynn Auld, who was crowned Miss South Dakota in 1959. The couple tied the marital knot in 1962 and has been blessed with three beautiful daughters – Jennifer, Sarah, and Andrea.

Brokaw officially began his career in journalism from a television station KTIV stationed at Sioux City, Iowa and in the following years he worked with many other stations including KMTV-TV at Omaha, Nebraska and WSB-TV at Atlanta, Georgia.

He landed a job at NBC News in 1966 and was assigned to do reporting jobs and anchoring for KNBC. He was named as NBC’s correspondent for the White House in 1973 and went on to host the show Today Show for over 7 years from 1976 to 1981.

Brokaw took on the responsibility of the co-anchor on the show NBC Nightly News from the 5th of April, 1982 alongside Roger Mudd. He was promoted to anchor the show only after a year.

During his time as NBC Nightly News’ co-anchor, he managed to cover numerous major historical events including the EDSA Revolution, Challenge disaster, Loma Prieta earthquake, Hurricane Andrew, and the fall of the Berlin wall as well. He had the opportunity of becoming the first ever journalist to interview Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev one-on-one on American television.

He partnered with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer to cover the September 11 Terrorist attacks in 2001 and in 2004, it was announced that he would be departing from NBC Nightly News after covering the then Presidential election.

Brokaw began serving as a special correspondent at NBC and during the Presidential elections of 2008, he was one of the most influential analyst. At Belmont University, Brokaw served as the moderator on the debate between Barak Obama and John McCain.

He has been a member of Council of Foreign Relations, the International Rescue Committee, the Committee to Protect Journalist and the Mayo Clinic on their board of directors. In addition to this, Howard University has Brokaw as its member and University of South Dakota, the American Museum of Natural History, the International Rescue Committee have him as their trustee.

Brokaw has made thousands of fans and admirers because of his decades of service, loyalty and dedication to journalism. With the help of his fans, Brokaw has made a huge social profile on the internet.

He is available on Twitter at @tombrokaw and has gained 320 followings. He had joined the site back in the July of 2011 and has tweeted only around 300 times since then.

Brokaw has faced a lot of obstacles and struggles in his career and overcame them as well but the most admirable thing about him is his consistency.

He has continually fulfilled his duties as a responsible journalist for decades. Because of this, he has been awarded with not only fame and recognition, but an enormous bank balance as well. His currently net worth is estimated to be around $80 million, which is an astonishingly large sum.