Kathie Lee Gifford

Kathryn Lee Gifford, born Kathryn Lee Epstein on August 16, 1953, in Paris, France, is an American television presenter, singer, songwriter, actress, author, and Broadway performer. Her father, Aaron Epstein, a musician and former U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, was stationed in France at the time of her birth. Her mother, Joan, was a singer and a relative of writer Rudyard Kipling. Gifford grew up in Bowie, Maryland, where she attended Bowie High School and sang in a folk group called Pennsylvania Next Right. Following her 1971 graduation, she studied drama and music at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Gifford's national television career began in the 1977–1978 season, when she served as singer and sidekick to host Tom Kennedy on the syndicated version of Name That Tune. In 1978 she joined the cast of Hee Haw Honeys, a short-lived spinoff of Hee Haw, and subsequently worked as a correspondent and substitute anchor on ABC's Good Morning America in the early 1980s. On June 24, 1985, she replaced Ann Abernathy as co-host of The Morning Show on WABC-TV alongside Regis Philbin. The program expanded to national broadcast in 1988 under the title Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee, bringing Gifford widespread recognition. She and Philbin received joint Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Talk Show Host eight consecutive years, from 1993 through 2000. Gifford departed the show on July 28, 2000, citing her Broadway work and a guest-hosting appearance on Late Show with David Letterman as inspiration to pursue more challenging projects.

On March 31, 2008, NBC announced that Gifford would join the fourth hour of Today alongside Hoda Kotb. The program, titled Today with Kathie Lee and Hoda, ran from 2008 to 2019. Viewership of the fourth hour grew from approximately 1.9 million viewers before her arrival to an average of 2.15 million total viewers as of 2014, a 13 percent increase. In 2019, Gifford and Kotb received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informative Talk Show Host. Gifford's final appearance on Today aired on April 5, 2019. Across her career she accumulated 11 Daytime Emmy nominations and won her first individual Daytime Emmy in 2010 as part of the Today team.

Gifford's Broadway career spanned 1999 to 2005. She starred in Putting It Together and also appeared in Scandalous and Annie. She has additionally served as a book writer for Broadway productions. In a concert performance of Annie at Madison Square Garden in December 2006, she played the role of Miss Hannigan. Her work in musical theatre extended beyond performing: she contributed musical numbers to Hats and wrote and produced Under the Bridge, based on the children's book The Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson.

Beyond Broadway and morning television, Gifford appeared as herself in a 1994 episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld and in the 2015 television film Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!. She provided voice work as Echidna in the 1998 television series Hercules and as the Mail Carrier Hero in Higglytown Heroes in 2004. In September 2005 she became a special correspondent on The Insider, a role she held until joining Today. She co-starred with Craig Ferguson in the 2018 film Then Came You and filmed a Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Christmas film, A Godwink Christmas, that same year.

Gifford has released multiple studio albums, including The Heart of a Woman in 2000, which featured the single "Love Never Fails." Her published books include the autobiographical Just When I Thought I'd Dropped My Last Egg: Life and Other Calamities in 2010, The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi in March 2018, It's Never Too Late: Make the Next Act of Your Life the Best Act of Your Life in 2020, and The Jesus I Know: Honest Conversations and Diverse Opinions about Who He Is in 2021. She has also authored a number of children's books.

In her personal life, Gifford married composer, arranger, producer, and publisher of Christian music Paul Johnson in 1976; they divorced in 1982. She married sportscaster and former NFL player Frank Gifford in 1986. The couple had a son, Cody, and a daughter, Cassidy. On April 28, 2021, Gifford was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the television industry, located at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard.