What These Retired News Anchors Are Doing Today

After she stepped away from her longtime career as a news anchor, away from the pressures of the spotlight, Katie Couric realized that she'd spent her entire life trying to be likable. She told NPR that finally having some time to reflect on her career made her realize that she just wasn't interested in that anymore. "My goal in life isn't to please people anymore. I think if you're likable ... you don't necessarily stand for anything. You don't rub people the wrong way because you [don't] have strong opinions, and honestly, I think if you're just likable, you're not very interesting," she said.

It's a question that many retired news anchors have had to face. Away from whatever their journalistic integrity meant to them at the time, what does a retired news anchor do to fill their time? When is it important that they come back to television to remark on the state of journalism? When is it better to just disappear? While many news anchors stay at their jobs as long as they can, hopping around from network to network in a bid to remain relevant, some of the most popular news anchors of all time have been willing to actually step away. Here's what these retired news anchors are doing today.

Bryant Gumbel anchored the news desk at "The TODAY Show" throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s, having taken over for Tom Brokaw. His co-anchor, Jane Pauley, told The Television Academy, "Bryant had a background in television comparable to mine. I will have to, between just us, admit that he's more talented." After Pauley left the show, Gumbel then anchored "TODAY" alongside Katie Couric. In 1995 (via YouTube), Gumbel and Couric pondered a question that regularly goes viral online to this day: "What is the Internet, anyway?"

After Gumbel left "TODAY," he jumped over to "The Early Show" on CBS. He left that anchor gig in 2002 to return to an earlier job, host of "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel." He'd begun his journalism career in sports, after all, so it was only natural for him to go back to his roots. "As I prepare to begin a new chapter in my personal life, it makes sense to me to turn the page on my professional life as well. Morning television has been a wonderful experience for me, but there are other interests that I'm eager to pursue," he said in a statement published by Wired. 

He remained as the host of "Real Sports," an HBO Show, until 2023. At that point, Gumbel finally retired for good. He told The Associated Press, "I'm sad, but everything has to end at some point and this is the right time for this to end."

Katie Couric made her career as an anchor on "The TODAY Show," hosting the morning news program until she left in the mid-2000s to anchor "CBS Evening News." However, the ratings never really showed up, and she wound up moving on from there as well. Couric reflected years later (via TODAY), "Because I enjoyed such a great position at 'The TODAY Show,' I thought America was really ready for a female anchor of the evening news, and I think we were just not as far along as I naively thought."

She went on to anchor "Yahoo! News," ultimately leaving news behind for good in 2017. On a podcast in 2018 (via People), she said she was disappointed in Yahoo!'s failure to promote her news show. "It certainly was not very fulfilling for me. I had all this great content, I was getting big interviews, and it was sort of like a tree falling in the forest," she said.

In the years since she left news behind, Couric has remained busy. She guest-hosted "Jeopardy" in 2021, taking over for the late Alex Trebek. "I was so inspired by him, especially by his courage toward the end of his life," Couric said in an interview on the "Jeopardy" YouTube channel. Trebek died of cancer, and Couric, who has been a longtime advocate for cancer research, announced her own diagnosis in 2022. In 2023, she told People, "I'm a living, walking example of the importance of early detection."

After anchoring shows like "Live with Regis & Kathie Lee" and "The TODAY Show," Kathie Lee Gifford left television in 2019. On her last day, she told the audience, "God brought Hoda [Kotb] into my life for all kinds of different reasons. I was supposed to learn from her. She was supposed to learn from me. We were supposed to share life together."

In 2024, reflecting on the five years since she'd walked away, Gifford told the New York Post that she hadn't seen the show since. It seems that Gifford has more of an appetite for hard news, rather than the family-friendly version she'd delivered on television each morning. "I want to know what's going on in this world, but I don't want it in the 'Today' show kind of way," she said. "Just give me the facts, folks."

She has, however, stayed in touch with Kotb. The longtime journalist gave fans an update in 2024, telling everyone (via Page Six), "Kat's living her best life, she's in Nashville, she's writing music, she is living her best life." Gifford was involved in "The Way," a film that combined music and storytelling to intertwine Biblical stories with American history. She wrote music for it, telling MovieGuide about one emotional day in the studio. "I was on my face worshiping. I really was heavy," she said. "I went over to my producer. His hands were trembling and there were tears streaming down his face."

Tom Brokaw is one of the most legendary journalists in television news history. His career stretches all the way back to "The TODAY Show" in the 1970s. He would move on to "NBC Nightly News," which he hosted for decades, and then he remained with the network as a contributor for decades after that. Brokaw officially left the news business in 2021.

Unfortunately, Brokaw's retirement wasn't entirely his own decision. He has multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, which he's been dealing with for more than a decade. On "CBS Sunday Morning" (via Entertainment Weekly) with his former co-anchor Jane Pauley, Brokaw reflected on his retirement. He mused, "I've had to change my life in some way. I really had to give up my daily activity with NBC." Brokaw acknowledged that the split was mutual and that NBC had been headed in a different direction. "I just wasn't the same person," he said. "And so for the first time in my life, I was kind of out there, you know, in a place I had never been in my life."

He's an author these days, having published "Never Give Up: A Prairie Family's Story" in 2023. The book recounts his family history, as he explained to Pauley on "CBS Sunday Morning." She asked him, "Is this the story of your success compared to your parents, or because of your parents?" The answer, for Brokaw, seemed easy. He said, "Oh, it's because of my parents."

Ted Koppel anchored the desk on "Nightline," an ABC News program, for many years before retiring in 2005. He spoke with NPR about that difficult decision, acknowledging that his work on "Nightline" had helped pioneer the network news format with his reporting on the Iran hostage crisis. "We discovered, more by accident than anything else, that it was possible to have one person sitting in Tehran and another in Moscow and another in Washington," he said. "Since they could all hear each other, it simply remained for me, as the host of the tea party, to say, 'Well, foreign minister, why don't you respond to what the defense minister here just said?' And before you knew it, you had people, who under normal circumstances wouldn't talk to each other, engaging in the most extraordinary free-wheeling conversations."

He still occasionally pops in on broadcast news as a commentator, as in early 2022, when he went on NewsNation to claim that negative coverage of former president Donald Trump betrayed the media's journalistic biases. He claimed that the type of journalism he once did has since fallen by the wayside. "It's been replaced now by a technology which allows anyone with access to a laptop computer or an iPhone ... to be their own punditry," he said. "You've got ... millions of people with the capacity to put out any kind of garbage that they want."

In 2009, after many years behind the anchor desk, Charlie Gibson stepped down as the anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight." He announced his departure in an email to his staff, which was later published by ABC News online. Gibson wrote, "It has not been an easy decision to make. This has been my professional home for almost 35 years. And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul."

While many retired news anchors have endeavored, in some way, to stay relevant, Gibson told the Boston Globe in 2020 that he and his wife spend most of their time traveling, including a love of cruising and going on safari in sub-Saharan Africa. "My wife and I are frequent cruisers," he confessed. "I cherish the sea days just sitting on a balcony looking at the water. I feel totally at peace. Cruises aren't cheap, but the memories are worth every penny." Spoken like a true retiree!

For the record, Gibson hasn't entirely disappeared into his love of traveling. He also still appears occasionally on "Good Morning America." Alongside his daughter Katie, Gibson hosts a podcast called "The Book Case." The Gibsons appeared on "GMA" in late 2023 to spread the word about the benefits of encouraging a love of reading in children. Charlie offered, "The point is, there's no magic bullet. There really isn't. The interesting thing all the experts say: It's up to the parents."