Kathie Lee Gifford

Kathie Lee Gifford (born Kathryn Lee Epstein) is an Emmy-winning television host, singer, actress and author. Born in Paris, France, Gifford was raised in Bowie, Maryland, where she developed an early interest in music and performance. She went on to attend the Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she studied drama and music before leaving school to pursue a career in entertainment.

Gifford made her first onscreen appearance on Days of Our Lives in 1975 before landing a role on Hee Haw Honeys from 1978 to 1979. She also joined the game show Name That Tune as a vocalist before her breakthrough in 1985, when she joined Regis Philbin as cohost of the syndicated morning program Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee. The show became a daytime TV staple and ran for 15 years before her departure in 2000. In 2008, she returned to morning television alongside Hoda Kotb as cohost of the fourth hour of Today, a role she held until 2019.

Beyond daytime TV, Gifford has released several studio albums, including The Heart of a Woman (2000). She has also authored books like Just When I Thought I’d Dropped My Last Egg: Life and Other Calamities (2009) and, in 2012, she brought the musical Scandalous to Broadway.

Gifford married composer Paul Johnson in 1976, and the pair divorced in 1982. She later married NFL star and broadcaster Frank Gifford in 1986 and remained with him until his death in 2015. The couple share two children, Cody Newton Gifford (born in 1990) and Cassidy Erin Gifford (born in 1993).