Who

The folksy former anchor of NBC's Nightly News, these days Brokaw spends his time writing nostalgic books and attending board meetings.

Backstory

A South Dakota native, Brokaw paid his broadcasting dues working his way up the food chain from Sioux City—where he earned $100 a week—to Omaha and then to Atlanta. From 1973 to '76, he was stationed in Washington, DC as the NBC White House correspondent, before moving to New York to host the Today show alongside Jane Pauley. In 1981, he was made co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News with Roger Mudd, becoming the sole host of the show in 1983 upon Mudd's departure. During Brokaw's two-decade tenure, he shepherded American audiences through such milestones as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 2000 recount, and Sept. 11th, not to mention umpteen thousand "Fleecing of America" segments. His stentorian voice and well-honed gravitas made him the most popular news anchor for much of the 1990s and early '00s; he invariably bested his rivals Peter Jennings at ABC and Dan Rather at CBS.

In 2004, shortly after the presidential election, Brokaw retired, handing off the show to Brian Williams. He returned to the air in 2008 to add some gravitas to MSNBC's election coverage. Following the death of Tim Russert in June 2008, Brokaw temporarily served as host of Meet the Press until the end of the 2008 election. 

In print

Before retiring from NBC, Brokaw authored two bestselling books about the pre-Boomer generation: The Greatest Generation in 1998 and The Greatest Generation Speaks a year later. In 2002 he published a bestselling memoir, A Long Way From Home. His most recent book, published in 2007, was Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today.

Board game

Since quasi-retiring, Brokaw has been active with the International Rescue Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations, where he's on the board of directors along with Bob Rubin, Pete Peterson, Henry Kravis, and Madeleine Albright, among others.

Personal

Brokaw married Meredith Lynn Auld, a former Miss South Dakota, in 1962. (They met when Brokaw interviewed her for a South Dakota radio station.) They have three adult daughters—Jennifer, Andrea and Sarah—and live in the 80s on Park Avenue, in the same building as Cathie Black and Stan O'Neal. They also own a home in Bedford, NY, which they bought for $4.25 million in 1999.

No joke

The straight-laced newsman and his wife love to go skinny-dipping. Brokaw was reportedly furious when the Times revealed that tidbit in 2004.