Robin Roberts (Newscaster) Biography, Cancer, Net Worth and Salary

Robin Roberts (Newscaster) Biography, Cancer, Net Worth and Salary

Robin Roberts is as tough as they come. The lady from the small town of Pass Christian has experienced ups and downs just like everyone else, but her story is a story of triumph and serves as a great inspiration to many others.

Robin was to become a basketball legend in her early years. However, her path would instead lead to a career in journalism and stop her playing career at the college level where she was an outstanding athlete.

In her journalistic portfolio, she has worked for prestigious broadcasters such as ESPN and ABC. In 2005 she took on the role of co-host of Good Morning America on ABC. Since then, she has secured high-profile interviews with such personalities as Chris Brown, Nate Parker, and Barack Obama. Robert’s fighting spirit is evident in the way she fought through phases of her life with breast cancer and a bone marrow disease and emerged as the winner. She is also a member of the Women’s Basketball and Sports Broadcasting Halls of Fame.

Robin Roberts Biography

The newscaster is the last child of four children – Sally-Ann, Lawrence Jr., and Dorothy – born to her parents Colonel Lawrence Roberts and Lucimarian Roberts. She was born in Vermont on November 23, 1960. However, she grew up in Mississippi, where she played table tennis and basketball at Pass Christian High School.

Robin Roberts (Newscaster) Biography, Cancer, Net Worth and Salary
Image source

After graduating as a classroom salutatorian in 1979, she went on to study at Southeastern Louisiana University. Louisiana State University was her first choice, but she turned down her basketball scholarship after visiting the institution and she did not like the feeling.

Instead, she enrolled for a journalism scholarship at Southeastern University, where she also played basketball for the school’s Lady Lion’s team. She graduated cum laude in Communications in 1983 and has an enviable record in the history of female basketball at the school. Robin Roberts left the Southeastern as the third-highest scorer in the team’s history. Her influence on the sport at the school was so profound that she was honored years later in 2011 when Southeastern decided to retire her number 21 jersey.

ALSO READ: Trey Burke Biography, Family Life, Height, Weight And Girlfriend

After college, she took a job as a sports reporter for the local channel WDAM-TV in her native Mississippi. By the late 1980s, she had added a number of other television stations to her professional experience. These included WLOX-TV (Biloxi, Mississippi), WSMV-TV (Nashville, Tennessee), and WAGA-TV and radio station V-103 (Atlanta, Georgia).

In 1990, she became a sports reporter for ESPN, the prestigious sports channel. Here Roberts made a name for herself and spent a significant part of her journalistic career.

While Robin Roberts was officially inducted into ABC in 2005 as co-host of the Good Morning America (GMA) program, she had already been a reporter for the station for a decade and had a dual role on ESPN and ABC. In 2005, she began hosting the GMA show with Diane Sawyer, who was eventually replaced by George Stephanopoulos in December 2009.

While Diane was permanently employed as host of ABC World News, Roberts and Stephanopoulos proved to be a successful team of hosts and revived the show’s fortunes. Three years after their collaboration began on the big screen, in April 2012, GMA was once again the country’s highest-rated morning show. This came after NBC’s Today had held the top spot for 16 consecutive years.

Over the years at GMA, Robin Roberts has proven her ability to piss off and even annoy high-profile guests. A perfect example of this would be her continued harassment of Chris Brown over his relationship with Rihanna in 2011. In November 2016, she also shook up the Birth of a Nation producer Nate Parker when she repeatedly brought up rape charges that had been investigated and acquitted of almost two decades earlier.

In addition to her work as a co-moderator on location, she has also held other equally important positions. In 2009 and 2011 she hosted the ABC previews for the Academy Awards and in 2010 she appeared in an episode of Disney’s Hannah Montana. She also had the honor of being an ABC reporter on location at the infamous royal wedding between Prince Harry and suit actress Meghan Markle.

Robin Roberts has received ample recognition for her work in the fields of athletics, sports broadcasting, and journalism in general. In 2012 she became a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Four years later she was again inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, this time into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. She also received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Mel Greenberg Media Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Radio Television Digital News Foundation 2018, among others.

Battle With Cancer And Bone Marrow Disease

Roberts’ demons have come in regard to her illness, but she has won every time. Her first documented relapse came in 2007 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but it was in the early stages. In August of the same year, she went under the knife and was treated with a series of chemotherapy and radiation until the end of January 2008. Eventually, she went into remission.

Four years later she developed a kind of bone marrow disease, the myelodysplastic syndrome. Since she could no longer work, she resigned from her GMA duties to concentrate on her recovery. In October 2012, she underwent a bone marrow transplant with her sister Sally-Ann Roberts, who was a donor, and was out of action for four months after the procedure until she returned to the silver screen on February 20, 2013, much to the delight of the audience.

Two of Robin’s awards came in the form of a 2012 Peabody Award and a 2013 Arthur Ashe Courage Award in recognition of her courage in allowing ABC to track and document her battle with the disease. These efforts helped to inspire people suffering from the same disease and at the same time encouraged people who were considering becoming bone marrow donors.

Relationship With Amber Laign

Robin Roberts (Newscaster) Biography, Cancer, Net Worth and Salary
Image source

Before 2005, Robert’s sexuality was not a big secret, especially not for her employees. However, in that year, she made herself officially known when she started dating a woman named Amber Laign. Amber is a graduate of the Swedish Institute and earns her living as a certified massage therapist focusing on people recovering from injuries.

She also has a background in the world of fashion, having worked for nine years at Berger & Stevens fashion house before becoming a massage therapist. Perhaps inspired by Robin’s fight against cancer, Amber founded a company, Plant Juice Oils, which focuses on essential oils and CBD blends and focuses on cancer patients and menopausal women.

Robin Roberts was one of the names on the Equality Forum’s list of 31 icons for LGBT History Month 2015.

ALSO READ: Maxmoefoe Profile, Age, Height, Girlfriend – Where is He Now?

Robin Roberts’ Salary, Net Worth

How much does the veteran newscaster take home every year? The Mississippi girl has experienced a steady increase in her stock during her time at ABC. And as proof of her status, the salary she takes home from the station has firmly placed her in the top 3 on the list of the highest-paid TV presenters in the country, if not the world.

According to Money, Robert’s salary for the year ending in June 2017 was $18 million. With the exception of Sean Hannity of Fox News, NBC’s Roberts and Megyn Kelly are the highest-paid TV hosts in the country, if not the world.

The GMA celebrity host is also an author and has written and edited three books through 2018, the last of which includes an accompanying audio version for her latest publication, Everybody’s Got Something in 2014.

Adding her screen revenues and book licenses together, her valuation of the net worth of $35 million is easily justified.