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Matt Lauer, best known as the anchor of NBC’s The Today Show, is a hot franchise. After 37 years in the TV business, Lauer has sat on the same couch as British royalty, Hollywood stars, and Vladimir Putin. How this host gets to have so much fun at work is beyond me, but fame and fortune aren’t the only perks of the job. In between TV appearances, this buttoned-down playboy crams in roaming time on his 40-acre horse farm in the Hamptons, and countless sex scandals while he’s at it.
We’re saving the sex scandals for another day. Today, we are here to talk money.
Matt Lauer Net Worth as of 2016: $60 Million
1979 – 1991
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Matt Lauer was born on December 30, 1957 in New York City. He knew from a young age that he wanted to work in media and television reporting news. So at 17, he went to study at the School of Telecommunications in Ohio. But instead of graduating like his peers, he dropped out in 1979, when he was just 21 years old. It was a risky move on the surface, but it freed up time for Lauer to embark on his television career right away, as a producer for midnight news at WOWK-TV in West Virginia. A year later, he became a reporter on the 6 P.M. and 11 P.M. newscasts, and the host of PM Magazine, which soon led to a role at ESPN.
1992 – 1997
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Lauer’s breakout year came in 1992, when he moved to WNBC-TV and became a co-anchor, alongside Jane Hanson, of the early weekday news show Today in New York. Thanks to the national TV exposure WNBC gave Lauer, an opportunity to fill in as a substitute for Margaret Larson on The Today Show came knocking. During that one year “audition,” his talent didn’t go unnoticed. By 1994, NBC asked Lauer to become the full-time news anchor for The Today Show. Things snowballed from there. Lauer soon became the co-host of Weekend Today and worked as the co-anchor for Ann Curry on NBC’s NBC News at Sunrise. In addition to being a part of the NBC Nightly News, he also hosted content for the Discovery Channel and HBO.
1998 – 2016
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When Matt Lauer’s contract with The Today Show came up for renewal in 2012, NBC was eager to make him stay. Following the speculation that Lauer would leave the show in the wake of the storm over the brutal departure of co-host Ann Curry, NBC offered Lauer a whopping $28 million salary. And to sweeten the deal, NBC picked up the tab for Lauer to chopper out to the Hamptons, several times a week, where he lives year-round with his wife, Annette Roque and their children.
But wait, this home in the Hamptons where Lauer choppers to isn’t just any ol’ home. It’s a 40-acre horse farm in Water Mill AND a mansion, reportedly worth $15 million. Since getting his raise at NBC, Lauer soon decided it was time to upsize. In June 2016, he bought a North Haven, NY property known as Strongheart Manor from Richard Gere for $36.5 million.
This New Yorker needs a lot of space.
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