Deborah Norville

Some Lesser Known Facts About Deborah Norville

• Growing up, she wanted to become a lawyer.

  

• She started learning knitting when she was 8 years old from her mother and her grandmother. When she was 9, she made her own pants.

• Growing up, she was a member of Girl Scouts and served as a member of Troop 1210, part of the Northwest Georgia Council of Girl Scouts during her childhood.

  

• During her senior year of high school, she won the Whitfield County (GA) Junior Miss pageant.

  

• She joined the Sigma Delta Chi (now Society of Professional Journalists) after enrolling at the University of Georgia.

• In 1976, she represented Georgia in the America’s Junior Miss pageant but didn’t win the contest. She credits the pageant for getting her interested in working for television after watching the CBS production team having fun while working.

  

• She was a member of Delta Delta Delta sorority, a women’s fraternity and Greek life organization.

• As a college student, she worked as an intern at Georgia Public Broadcasting.

• She started working as a reporter for WAGA-TV 5 in Atlanta as an undergraduate college student in 1978. Her performance earned her a weekend job at the station during her senior year in college.

  

• During an interview, she talked about working on weekends and driving to Atlanta while studying in college, often spending the nights sleeping in her car and said,
  

  I’d leave the university on Friday afternoon and drive to Atlanta, and sometimes I had a place to stay, and sometimes I slept in my car in the parking lot. I worked Saturday and Sunday; Sunday night, after the 11:00 p.m. show, I’d drive back and go to class Monday morning.”

• She completed her graduation summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade point average.

• She was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the oldest academic honor society in the United States.

• After completing her graduation, she started working as an anchor in 1979 at WAGA-TV 5.

• In the 1980s, she served as a contributing editor for the Inside Sports magazine.

• In January 1982, she moved to Chicago and started working as a reporter at WMAQ-TV. Later, she started working as an anchor at the station.

  

• While working in Chicago, she helped launch the local Arthritis Foundation Telethon, providing information about arthritis and raising money for people suffering from it.

• In 1986, Mayor Harold Washington declared ‘Deborah Norville Week’ in Chicago after it was announced that Deborah Norville would join NBC News in New York.

• In January 1987, she started working as an anchor of ‘NBC News at Sunrise’ and became the only solo female anchor of a network news program.

  

• In September 1989, she became an anchor on the American news show, ‘Today.’

  

• In 1989, she became a member of the Board of Directors of the Greater New York Council of Girl Scouts.

• After she became the co-host of ‘Today’ in January 1990, replacing Jane Pauley, the show’s ratings declined, and the NBC management was blamed for mishandling the transition.

• In February 1991, she took maternity leave to have her first child, Niki Wellner. She was later replaced by Katie Couric.

• During an interview, she revealed that getting replaced by NBC caused her depression and said,
  

  That was a real period of depression for me, which was self-diagnosed and self-cured. Maybe that’s why Deborah Norville is a better story today. I could have gone off into the sunset and no one would have blamed me.”

• In September 1991, she started hosting the radio show, ‘The Deborah Norville Show: From Her Home to Yours’ for the ABC TalkRadio Networks, broadcasting from her homes in New York and Long Island.

• From 1991 to 1993, she worked as a contributing editor to McCall’s magazine.

• In October 1992, she started working as a correspondent at CBS News and reported for the network’s documentary shows such as ‘Street Stories’ and ’48 Hours.’ Later, she started working as an anchor of ‘America Tonight,’ an evening news show.

• She served as a semiregular anchor of the ‘CBS Sunday Evening News’ from 1993 to 1995.

• She started working as a freelance lecturer in 1994, speaking to companies such as ‘Macy’s, Inc.’, ‘Avon,’ ‘Seimans,’ and ‘Prudential Financial.’

• On 6 March 1995, she became host of the American tabloid television program ‘Inside Edition.’

  

• She has written several books, including ‘I Can Fly’ (2001), ‘Thank You Power: Making the Science of Gratitude Work for You’ (2007), and ‘Knit With Deborah Norville—18 Classic Designs For The Whole Family’ (2009).

  

• She worked as an anchor for the prime time interview show, ‘Deborah Norville Tonight’ at MSNBC from 2004 to 2005.

• In 2008, she launched her own knit and crochet yarn line, ‘Deborah Norville Collection.’

• She served on the board of directors for Viacom, an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate, from March 2013 to December 2019.

• In 2015, she became a host of the show, ‘Knit and Crochet Now!’

  

• She had a surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid nodule in April 2019. The nodule was first noted by a viewer of one of her shows, after which Deborah went to a doctor, who diagnosed it as non-cancerous at the time.

  

• After 30 years of hosting ‘Inside Edition,’ she announced her retirement from the show on 3 April 2025.

• She supports commercial whaling activities, which provide the raw products for her anti-aging creams and lotions. She also provides financial support to the Japan Whaling Organization, a pro-whaling group.

• She has a membership in various organisations including the Council on Foreign Relations, Women’s Forum of New York, and Women Corporate Directors and is a Director for the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

• She has served as a board member of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York and Rita Hayworth (Alzheimer’s) Gala Steering Committee.

• She drinks alcohol occasionally.

  

• She is an animal lover and owned a Labrador Retriever, Piper, who passed away in 2024.