Lester Holt

Some Lesser Known Facts About Lester Holt

• His father is African-American and his mother is of Jamaican, Indian, English, and Scottish descent.

  

• He grew up in airbases and loves aeroplanes. He can often predict the names of aircraft and their engine by only listening to their sounds during their flights.

  

• When he was 8 years old, he lived in Elmendorf Air Force Base, Anchorage, Alaska for 4 years since his father was stationed there.

• He was baptised twice, once at age 9 in Anchorage and later, at age 14 in the Carmichael church.

• Growing up, he was a lead singer in his church.

• He interned at KCRA, a Sacramento television station while studying in high school and reported his first news segment when he was 16 years of age.

• While working at the KCRA, he would often do voiceovers for commercials.

• He had testified in favour of a bill to allow 17-year-olds to register to vote in front of a California legislature committee when he was a high school senior.

• He took up bass guitar and jazz when he was in high school.

• While studying in high school, he used to make daily announcements for the public address system.

  

• He served as a DJ and reported news on the country music station, KRAK in 1976.

• Jeep Cherokee, the car issued by the station was fitted with police scanners that allowed him to reach a place in time for scoops. He earned the nickname, ‘Lightning Bolt Holt’ as he was often the first non-emergency responders on the scene of accidents.

  

• In 1976, he bought an electric bass from a pawn shop in J Street, Sacramento and continues to keep it in his office.

  

• He started working at KCBS radio station after dropping out of college.

• He was rejected for a job at the WNBC radio station in 1979.

• He has ophidiophobia, which is a fear of snakes.

• Due to his workaholic nature, he once took his future wife, Carol Hagen on a date to a forest fire in Napa Valley, California.

• He worked as a reporter at WCBS-TV from 1981 to 1982.

  

• He worked as a weekend anchor and reporter at KNXT from 1982 to 1983.

• He worked as an anchor at WCBS-TV from 1983 to 1986.

  

• He worked as a weekend anchor and reporter at WBBM-TV from 1986 to 2000.

  

• He has appeared in several films and TV shows including ‘Primal Fear’ (1996), ‘Early Edition’ (1997-1999), ’30 Rock’ (2007-2011), ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ (2013), and ‘House of Cards’ (2015).

  

• One of the activities on his bucket list was running with the bulls in Spain, which, he later dropped after joining NBC (National Broadcasting Company) in 2000.

• He worked as a correspondent at NBC News/MSNBC from 2000 to 2003.

• In the early part of his career, he used to sport a moustache which he shaved off shortly before joining MSNBC, which, according to him, was the result of a bad day of skiing followed by drinking a couple of beers.

  

• His coworkers nicknamed him ‘Iron Pants’ due to his ability to stay focused even after long working shifts during the recounting of the presidential election votes in Florida in 2000 and the post-9/11 terrorist attack on the United States.

• He worked as a co-anchor of Weekend Today, a program of NBC News from 2003 to 2015.

• In 2003, he became a fill-in anchor of the American morning TV show, ‘The Today Show.’

  

• He recorded two songs as a bassist for the soundtrack of the American TV show ‘House, M.D.’ (2004-2012) with the celebrity music group ‘Band From TV’ in 2007.

• He served as a substitute weekend anchor for Brian Williams at NBC Nightly News during his time period of 2004 to 2015.

• He provided voiceover for the American documentary TV series, ‘Why Planes Crash’ from 2009 to 2015.

• While reporting for the Haitian earthquake in 2010, he slept outside on a runway each night before going to report on the devastation caused by the earthquake.

• While reporting from Egypt during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, he faced several angry mobs due to which NBC had to send an extraction specialist squad to get him and his crew out.

• In 2011, he became an anchor at the weekly American television news magazine reality legal show, ‘Dateline NBC.’

  

• He served as an interim anchor at the NBC Nightly News from 6 August 2013 to 2 September 2013, and from 9 February 2015 to 18 June 2015.

• On 22 June 2015, he became an anchor at the NBC Nightly News.

  

• He revealed in an interview in 2017 that he had recorded a juror instruction video in the mid-’90s that continued to be played in Chicago’s Cook County Court.

  

• In April 2021, he became a managing editor at the NBC Nightly News.

• He revealed in an interview that the only assignment he has ever refused in his career was to interview a person while jumping out of a plane with a parachute.

• Although he is based out in New York, he often travels to Los Angeles (L.A.) where he maintains an apartment and anchored the NBC Nightly News from the L.A. studio.

• He enjoys baking desserts such as cobbler and pies.

  

• He can speak a little bit of Italian.

• He had once installed a garage shelf which later collapsed, causing buckets of paint to fall from it onto his babysitter’s car.

• He has dabbled in stand-up comedy.

• He is known for his deep baritone voice.

• He is a technophile and often carries the latest gadgets with him. In an interview, he revealed that he travels with two phones, an iPad, a laptop and an Apple Watch.

• While working at NBC, New York, he often attends the Manhattan Church of Christ on Sundays.

• On 24 February 2025, he announced that he would step down as the host of ‘NBC Nightly News’ in the summer of that year.

• He plays bass in the band, ‘The Rough Cuts.’