The Stunning Transformation Of Former CBS News Anchor Norah O'Donnell

It's not easy to rise to the pinnacle of broadcast journalism in the U.S. For the few that do, there are ample rewards — big paydays, big interviews, and sometimes even achieving a level of stardom on par with the celebrities and luminaries they grill on camera. Such has been the case with TV news anchor Norah O'Donnell, who's become a superstar on TV news for two different networks, and one of the few women in TV history to host a nightly newscast on network television, as anchor of "CBS Evening News."

Accolades? O'Donnell has earned plenty, including two Emmy Awards, and the rare distinction of having interviewed every living president of the United States. She's also managed to sit down with a vast array of newsmakers, ranging from country music legend Dolly Parton to Pope Francis. 

Since joining CBS News, she's become part of a journalistic legacy that includes such renowned figures as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, and it wasn't easy to get there. To find out more, read on to relive her journey and experience the stunning transformation of former CBS news anchor Norah O'Donnell.

Norah O'Donnell was born in Washington, D.C., in 1974. Her father, Francis O'Donnell, was a physician with the U.S. Army. When she was a toddler, her family relocated to San Antonio before her father's career sent them overseas. "I always describe myself as an 'Army brat,'" Norah declared during an interview with Parade. When she was a child, Norah lived on military bases in Germany and South Korea. As she explained, that lifestyle taught her some important lessons about flexibility and being able to flourish outside of one's comfort zone. "There is nothing predictable about being in the military, and that puts a lot of stress on families," she explained.

In 2017, Norah returned to the South Korea home where she and her family lived when she was a kid. "It was a great place to grow up," she recalled during a segment for "CBS This Morning." "You were safe, even though you were in the middle of a foreign country."

It was in Seoul, in fact, where Norah gained her first experience in front of the camera, appearing on an educational TV show in which she spoke Korean words and phrases, and then translated them into English. "They needed people to make those tapes and appear on kind of an English-teaching television program, so I got a job doing that," she said in a different interview with Parade.

After graduating from high school, Norah O'Donnell was accepted to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She graduated with a B.A. in philosophy and an M.A. in liberal studies. "My liberal arts education was about the joy of learning and fostering curiosity," she told Irish America magazine of how her Georgetown education shaped her.

During her senior year, she landed an internship at ABC News. "That led into my first print journalism job, which was as a reporter for Roll Call newspaper," she told Parade. "That was really kind of like, wow, you've made it and you see your name in print." O'Donnell covered Congress for the newspaper, which focused on Capitol Hill, and also traveled throughout the U.S. to report on various political campaigns for both the Senate and the House of Representatives. In addition, she covered the impeachment of Bill Clinton. 

For O'Donnell, working in print journalism provided her with valuable experience, but it was also, ultimately, a means to an end. "I knew early on I wanted to be a network correspondent," she told Irish America. That ambition would be fulfilled when she applied for a job at upstart cable news network MSNBC.

Norah O'Donnell's entry into broadcast journalism came when she was just 25 years old, when veteran TV journalist Tim Russert hired her to be a correspondent for MSNBC. Russert was not only her boss, but also a mentor. "He was always such a strong supporter," she shared with Parade. The first thing he would always say to me — other than good morning — he would say, 'What do you know?'" That simple four-word phrase spurred her to dig deeper, to do the extra work that would deliver scoops she could bring to him.

The two also developed a friendship; in fact, it was Russert who was responsible for the name of her youngest child. "And he said to me, 'If I'd ever had a girl, I would have named her Riley,'" she recalled in an interview with AdWeek. "Tim died two weeks before Riley was born, so I never got to tell him that we did name her Riley."

Looking back, O'Donnell continued to be inspired by the support Russert gave her throughout the time they worked together. "He was so great in really supporting all the journalists that worked for him," she said. "It still gives me a great deal of confidence when I think about him and the way he inspired a lot of us."

While attending Georgetown, Norah O'Donnell met fellow student Geoff Tracy. "That was it right away," Tracy told Georgetown University. "In retrospect, it's a little unbelievable I met the person I've been married to my entire life." According to O'Donnell, they first crossed paths while waiting in line at the cafeteria during the first week of school; looking back, she'd come to believe that it was the hand of fate that brought them together at such a formative point in their lives. "It was meant to be to meet each other there," O'Donnell mused. Tracy knew he had found "the one" during that first encounter in the cafeteria line. "That was it right away," he said. "It took her a little bit longer to come around." Georgetown, in fact, played such an important role in their relationship that when they got married in 2001, they exchanged vows at Dahlgren Chapel, situated on the Georgetown campus.

The couple started a family, welcoming twins Grace and Henry in 2007, followed just over a year later by daughter Riley. O'Donnell's MSNBC boss Tim Russert broke the news to TV viewers of Riley's arrival. "She has Henry and she has Grace," he said, MediaBistro reported. "Thirteen months ... this is an Irish triplet."

Speaking with Woman's World, O'Donnell shared her mother's marital advice. "The one nugget that really stands out is my mom saying 'marry your best friend,'" she said.

During those years when she got married and started a family, Norah O'Donnell was also building her career at MSNBC. In 2005, she was named the network's chief Washington correspondent. She'd also branched out from cable news to NBC, appearing as a news correspondent on the network's popular morning show, "Today," and was a regular panelist on the Sunday morning political affairs broadcast "The Chris Matthews Show."

From the outside looking in, O'Donnell appeared to have nailed it when it came to the having-it-all conundrum facing working women trying to balance the competing demands of career and family. As she told The Washington Post, however, it wasn't nearly as easy as she may have been making it look. "We were at a wedding recently, and a friend asked me, 'How are you doing?'" she recalled. "I said, 'I'm struggling with the balance of work and family. With three kids under two, it's hard; there's no sleep.'" In fact, O'Donnell had come to believe work-life balance wasn't really achievable, observing that anyone with a demanding career such as hers would inevitably spend more time at work than with family. "The most important thing is, 'Are you in the moment?' she said.

Despite that philosophy, O'Donnell admitted she wasn't immune to experiencing mom guilt. "I really like to try and end the day with some quality time with my kids," she mused. "If not, I feel guilty."

Norah O'Donnell's husband, Geoff Tracy, did not pursue a career in journalism; after graduating from Georgetown with a degree in theology, he studied to become a chef, attending the Culinary Institute of America in New York. When he returned to D.C., he opened a restaurant, Chef Geoff”s — which was successful enough to spawn a second location, Chef Geoff's Downtown. He went on to open more eateries, under the banner of his restaurant group, Chef Geoff's Deluxe Hospitality. "We're not trying to meld the brands here. We want to maintain them differently," he said of his group in a 2018 interview with Eater DC. "This definitely positions us to be strong and successful."

In 2010, the spouses teamed up for their own culinary venture, a cookbook aimed at parents with infants: "Baby Love," which instructs parents how to make their own healthy, nutritious baby food. "I share certain techniques in the book that teach people to be faster in the kitchen," Tracy told People. 

As O'Donnell explained, she certainly understood how daunting the prospect could be given how busy parents get, but insisted that making homemade baby food isn't nearly as time-consuming as it might appear. "I was surprised at how easy it was to make our own [food]," she said. "One day when you have an hour of free time, you can bang it out. It's simple."

Having cut her teeth in broadcast journalism at MSNBC under the mentorship of Tim Russert, there were likely expectations that Norah O'Donnell would spend the rest of her career with NBC News. Instead, she pivoted, taking a job with a competitor. In 2011, she joined CBS News, initially serving as the substitute anchor for the network's flagship political affairs show "Face the Nation," in addition to becoming chief White House correspondent.

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," said O'Donnell in a statement accompanying the announcement, as reported by Politico. "I'm thrilled to cover the White House for CBS News. It is an honor and a privilege to join the great journalists at this legendary network."

As O'Donnell told Irish America in 2014, she felt right at home at the Tiffany Network, declaring that her own style of reporting was perfectly in sync with the CBS News tradition. "We are committed to original reporting, great story telling, and hopefully we are doing the kinds of stories you won't see elsewhere," she said, pointing out the CBS News tended to steer away from the celebrity-oriented fluff clogging up other news outlets. "We are trying to focus on stories that tell us something larger about the human condition and the country that we live in or the world that we live in," she added.

Nora O'Donnell has long integrated health and fitness into her lifestyle. Not only has this included regular visits to the gym, she's also a fervent runner. "I usually run two to three times a week and work out with a trainer once a week," she told Runner's World.

However, that hasn't left her immune to health scares. In 2016, she was diagnosed with melanoma. As she wrote in an essay for Good Housekeeping, a regular skin checkup led to a few biopsies being taken; when the results came back, her doctor revealed it was melanoma. Her mind reeled, fearing the worst, until her doctor informed her that it had been caught early enough that immediate surgery should eradicate the skin cancer entirely. The surgery was successful, but left O'Donnell with a bright red scar. "I choose to see it not as something ugly, but as a reminder that early detection saves lives — it might even have saved mine," she wrote.

A few years later, she was hit with another health scare when she required an emergency appendectomy. That experience, she wrote in a 2019 Instagram post, also taught her a valuable lesson: to pay closer attention to what her body tells her. "If you are in pain, see a doctor," she wrote. "Don't wait five days like I did ignoring pain."

In the TV networks' battle for morning supremacy, CBS has long been in distant third while NBC's "Today" and ABC's "Good Morning America" duke it out for first place. Having poached Norah O'Donnell from NBC, CBS decided to put its new acquisition to work to revitalize its own morning offering, with O'Donnell replacing Erica Hill to sit alongside veteran PBS interviewer Charlie Rose and Oprah Winfrey's BFF Gayle King on "CBS This Morning."

The new gig was a big honor — but also a big shakeup for her home life, given that O'Donnell's husband and kids lived in Washington, D.C. (where she'd been based as White House correspondent), while her new job required her to be in New York City; while her family eventually relocated to NYC, initially she wound up flying back to D.C. on the weekends. 

Still, she felt the opportunity was worth the personal upheaval. "It's not the kind of a job you turn down," she said in an interview with the Associated Press. "Morning TV is the crown jewel of broadcast journalism. Where else can you do two hours of live television with the audience that we have?"

Norah O'Donnell held firm at "CBS This Mornings" for the next few years, weathering rumors of friction with co-anchor Gayle King, and the ejection of Charlie Rose after his #MeToo scandal. In 2019, another shakeup hit the show as Page Six reported that King had engineered O'Donnell's ouster from the show due to their alleged feud. 

O'Donnell did announce she was leaving the show — not because she was being pushed out, but to take on an even higher-profile job with the network: anchor of "CBS Evening News." Her new role would also see her become the show's managing editor, as well as anchoring political coverage and serving as a contributor to "60 Minutes," the network's flagship newsmagazine show. "Excited to sleep in AND watch my favorite morning show @CBSThisMorning," she tweeted, jokingly sharing her relief at no longer having to wake up in the wee hours of the morning,

While there were some who felt that the concept of an evening news broadcast in the age of social media and 24-hour news networks had become woefully outdated, O'Donnell insisted that "CBS Evening News" still had an important role to play in the journalistic landscape. "If you want affirmation, you can turn on a cable channel," she proclaimed, referencing cable news' propensity to favor opinion over hard news. "If you want information, turn on the 'CBS Evening News.' People are craving a trusted, fact-based news source."

There's no denying that Donald Trump has changed the political landscape, such as his propensity to get into public feuds with high-profile journalists. One of these was Norah O'Donnell, who interviewed Trump in 2016 during his successful presidential campaign. It was while Trump was president, however, that O'Donnell really got under his skin, thanks to her "60 Minutes" interview with a whistleblower who claimed he was fired as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for his refusal to follow Trump's guidance to promote hydroxychloroquine (an anti-malaria medication) as a treatment for COVID-19. 

The furious POTUS responded in a series of tweets, accusing the "third place anchor" of propagating "Fake News," while also suggesting that then-CBS chairwoman Shari Redstone take action by firing O'Donnell and replacing her with another anchor. 

O'Donnell commented on Trump's fiery tweetstorm when she subsequently appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." "That goes with the territory of being in journalism," she said, brushing aside Trump's attacks. "It doesn't bother me if I know we've got our facts straight ... it was a pretty rock-solid story."

In July 2024, Norah O'Donnell announced she'd no longer be an anchor on "CBS Evening News" after the upcoming presidential election in November. According to The Hollywood Reporter, she would remain at CBS, but in a new role as special correspondent to conduct interviews that would appear in both the evening newscast and "60 Minutes." 

O'Donnell shared her thoughts on her impending exit in a memo to CBS News staff. "There's so much work to be proud of! But I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, connected to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle. It's time to do something different," she wrote. "Beyond that, I'm pleased to share that I have made a long-term commitment to CBS News to continue to do the same storytelling and big interviews that have been our hallmark."

O'Donnell's predecessor, broadcast journalist Katie Couric, weighed in on CBS News' decision to replace O'Donnell with two men, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, in an op-ed for The New York Times. Admitting she was let down by this move, Couric contended that filling O'Donnell's place with two guys was "odd and more than a little out of touch."