Rachel Maddow was born on April 1, 1973, in Castro Valley, California. She is best known for her role as MSNBC news anchor on her self-titled talk show, The Rachel Maddow Show. Maddow’s great success with the show stems from her ability to break things down for users, and her pleasant, affable onscreen personality – which is increasingly hard to find in the world of 24-hour news broadcasting.

How much is Rachel Maddow worth?

Rachel Maddow | D Dipasupil/Getty Images for AWXII Rachel Maddow | D Dipasupil/Getty Images for AWXII

Rachel Maddow is worth an estimated $20 million. Most of this comes from The Rachel Maddow Show, but some of it comes from her acting pursuits. She has appeared in Ugly Betty, The Ides of March, 30 Rock, and House of Cards, among others.

What is Rachel Maddow’s salary?

Rachel Maddow gets paid $7 million a year for hosting her talk show. The large sum is thanks to her increasing popularity, and dedication to journalism – which is apparent in the awards her show has won over the years.

Early years and education

Rachel Maddow grew up with ultra-conservative parents. This is important to note because Maddow is openly gay and married to her wife, Susan Mikula. Since an early age, Maddow has been supportive of the LGBTQ+ community by helping to advocate aids research and understanding.

After graduating from Stanford University in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in public policy, Maddow moved to San Francisco. Here, she helped to advocate for the aids research group, ACT UP. The work she did with this charity helped to earn her the Rhodes Scholarship, making Maddow the first openly gay individual to ever win the award.

Maddow applied her scholarship towards the tuition at Oxford University. She later graduated with a doctorate in political science.

Where did Maddow get her start in journalism?

Maddow first got her start in broadcast journalism in radio. In 1999, when Rachel Maddow was 26 years old, she entered a contested held by WRNX. The contest was meant to help choose a new host for their talk shows. Maddow won and was hired to co-host the morning drive show.

Maddow remained in her position with WRNX for several years, until 2004 when she auditioned for the newly founded liberal radio show, Air America. She co-hosted the show until it was canceled in 2005.

‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ wins several Emmy awards

The Rachel Maddow Show has been nominated for numerous Emmy awards – three of which they won. The first win came in 2011, when “Good morning, Landlocked Central Asia” won the award for Outstanding Live Interview.

In 2017, Maddow’s show won two awards. “An American Disaster: The Crisis in Flint” was awarded the Emmy for Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis, while “One-on-one with Kellyanne Conway” won an award for Outstanding Live Interview.

Maddow has sliced herself a niche with long, complex segments

The goal of most news broadcasting segments is to break long or complex stories into small bites of information that the audience can digest in as little time as possible. Rachel Maddow, however, has created a niche for herself by going the opposite way.

She introduced a segment on her television talk show where she takes stories and goes over all the little nuances and details so the audience can fully understand them. The segment is an incredible 27 minutes on average, which is an absolute lifetime in the world of television.

The craziest part is that Maddow has received higher ratings and numbers of viewers since introducing this segment, which many didn’t believe would work. She has proven to be skillful and connected enough to the audience that they not only understand what she is explaining but are left craving even more.