Meredith Vieira

Meredith Louise Vieira (born December 30, 1953) is an American broadcast journalist and television personality. She is best known as the original moderator of the daytime talk show The View (1997–2006), the original host of the syndicated daytime version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2002–2013), and as co-host of the NBC morning news program Today (2006–2011). , she hosts the syndicated weekday game show 25 Words or Less. Vieira has also been a contributor to Dateline NBC, Rock Center with Brian Williams, and NBC Nightly News, and hosted the Lifetime television series Intimate Portrait (1994–2005). From 2014 to 2016, she hosted her own syndicated daytime talk show, The Meredith Vieira Show. Early life Vieira was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in nearby East Providence, the daughter of Mary Elsie (Rosa), a homemaker, and Edwin Vieira, a medical doctor, both first-generation Portuguese Americans. She is the youngest of four children, with three older brothers. All four of Vieira's grandparents came from the Azores—three from Faial Island, one of the nine islands in the archipelago. The family name Vieira means "scallop" in Portuguese. They emigrated to New England in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, settling around Providence, Rhode Island. Vieira was raised in the Roman Catholic faith, but she has stated in recent interviews that she has "spirituality, not a religion". Vieira attended the Lincoln School, a Quaker all-girls offshoot of Moses Brown School in Providence, graduating in 1971. She graduated with a degree in English from Tufts University in 1975.