The Untold Truth Of Craig Melvin

A familiar face to NBC viewers for years, Craig Melvin became part of the Today family in 2018. For Melvin, joining Today as the morning's show's weekday news anchor was part of a career journey that began in his hometown of Columbia, S.C., when he was still in high school. 

According to The Washington Post, Melvin was a "teen reporter" for Columbia's NBC affiliate, WIS News 10. His talent emerged early; as WIS News reported, he won an Associated Press award in 1996. After graduating college, Melvin returned to WIS, first as a featured reporter, then anchor. In 2008, he left WIS for a high-profile anchor job in Washington, D.C. Three years later, AdWeek reported on his next big move: to New York City, taking a job with MSNBC that also involved reporting on the NBC network. Once again, Melvin rose through the ranks, eventually becoming MSNBC anchor, then anchor of the weekend edition of Today before being tapped for the show's flagship weekday edition. 

Viewers have watched Melvin's rise as it happened, on live television, yet there's a lot they might not know about him. Keep reading to discover the untold truth of Craig Melvin.

In mid-March 2020, a Today staffer tested positive for COVID-19. That staffer had been in close contact with Craig Melvin and Al Roker, resulting in both remaining in their homes and missing that day's broadcast. 

"Out of an abundance of caution, Craig and Al are taking the morning off while we map that colleague's close contacts," Today's Savannah Guthrie told viewers. Melvin retweeted that video announcement, sharing his own message. "Feeling great this am," he wrote. "Thinking about our friend and colleague. Thinking about everyone grappling with this right now. I'll be fine. So will we."

Weeks later, Melvin's experience with the world-changing virus became even deeper. As Variety reported, in April, he began hosting Craig Melvin Reports: Coronavirus Pandemic, airing for two weeks in the slot where his MSNBC show normally ran. According to NBC News, Melvin would "safely report with a slim crew from key locations critical to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic starting with the Central Park field hospital on Monday." For his broadcast, Melvin would be joined remotely each day by a "Doctor on Duty" who could provide "expert insight."

Two high-profile NBC scandals rocked the network, but oddly enough, served to fuel Melvin's rise through the ranks. The first came in the fall of 2017, when veteran Today anchor Matt Lauer was axed after Variety detailed the sexual harassment allegations of numerous women. According to a report in ET, both Melvin and Willie Geist had been angling to replace Lauer; R Online reported Melvin was "devastated" when the gig ultimately went to Hoda Kotb. 

However, another opportunity arose. In August 2018, Melvin stepped away from the Saturday edition of Today, with Page Six speculating it was in order for him to join the weekday Today. As reported by The State, this came to pass less than a week later, when Melvin was bumped up to "weekday anchor" on Today. "The dream has come true," Melvin said, admitting, "it's a pinch-myself moment."

Weeks later, NBC's high-profile new hire Megyn Kelly was fired over some controversial comments about blackface. The former Fox News personality's abrupt sacking left an hour-long hole in NBC's daytime schedule — which led to the creation of Today Third Hour, with Melvin and other Today personalities appearing in the studio of Kelly's canceled show.

Craig Melvin married Lindsay Czarniak, an on-air personality for ESPN and former NBC Sports correspondent, in 2011. At the time of their wedding, the couple opened up to The Washington Post about their relationship. "She loves life," said Melvin of his bride. "She stops. She smells the roses. She picks a few, and she shows them to me — 'Here, smell these!'" In the years since their wedding, reported Closer Weekly, the couple went on to have two children, son Delano and daughter Sybil. 

Czarniak exited ESPN in 2017 and told The Washington Post that while "sports is still very much [her] love," she would actually like to cover a broader range of topics as a journalist. In 2019, she joined Fox Sports, focusing on NASCAR along with working as an NFL sideline reporter.

In addition to her journalism career, Czarniak also has an occasional sideline as an actress. According to IMDb, she has two onscreen acting credits under her belt: portraying a character named Mist in the 2000 sci-fi/action movie Aquarius, and a brief cameo as a news anchor in the 2010 horror flick Ghosts Don't Exist.

Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book Outliers proposed an intriguing theory: in order to achieve true mastery in a field — whether it's as a professional athlete, a musician, or, in the case of Craig Melvin, a broadcast journalist — one needs to spend 10,000 hours honing that particular skill. 

While at least one study disagreed with Outliers' conclusion, Melvin thinks Gladwell is onto something. "I am a firm believer in the 10,000 Hour Rule (the principle that 10,000 hours of 'deliberate practice' are needed to become world-class in any field)," Melvin said in an interview with Serendipity. For Melvin, this meant serving as a journalistic "one-man-band" in his early days as a broadcaster. "I would drive the news truck to locations, run the cable from the truck to the camera, and report. I did it all and that probably helped me in my career more than anything else."

Whatever he reported on, added Melvin, "I was forced to learn how to speak extemporaneously on live television on a regular basis. I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it, and 18 years later I can tell you I still enjoy is just as much."

During the summer of 2020, when protests erupted around the globe in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Craig Melvin hosted a timely NBC News "virtual conversation" titled Growing Up Black. As a Black man married to a white woman and father of two biracial children, Melvin brought a unique perspective. 

As Today reported, Melvin explained why people commenting about his "well-behaved" children tended to irk him. "They either look Black or they're racially ambiguous and I'm always struck when someone, a stranger will say to me, 'Oh your kids are so well-behaved,'" Melvin said of his children, who at the time were aged three and six. "And you know that they probably wouldn't say that if there were two white kids sitting there who are the same age. It's like, did you not expect my kids to be well-behaved?"

Melvin had previously opened up on Today about raising biracial children. As Melvin said, he and his wife Lindsay Czarniak "have always lived lives that we like to think we don't see race first ... But since we've been married, we have become more aware of it than we were before we were married. Since we've had children we've become even more aware of it, and we've talked about how do you rear biracial children in an environment like this?"

Another thing that Today viewers may not know about Craig Melvin is that he needs glasses, and wears contact lenses to correct his vision. However, thanks to some extreme inattentiveness, those same lenses that assist his sight nearly caused him to lose it.

"I was one of those people that did not listen to their ophthalmologist when they would tell them repeatedly that they should not sleep in their contact lenses," Melvin admitted in an interview with People. "I never had any problems when I did, so if my eyes got dry I would just use rewetting drops. I just thought that maybe my eyes were different."

When he began to notice persistent redness in his eyes, Melvin finally heeded his coworkers' advice and visited a doctor — who told him his "filthy habit" of sleeping with his contacts had resulted in developing a corneal ulcer. Melvin's diagnosis led him, for the first time ever, to wear glasses on the air, and he offered advice for viewers who wore contact lenses: "Don't be an idiot like me."