Since joining NBC News, Lauer has conducted a number of newsworthy interviews. In January 1998, he sat down for the first interview with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal made headlines. Lauer also conducted a 20-minute interview and tour of the George Bush Library in College Station, Texas, with the former president himself. In April 2000, Lauer marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon with an interview with former P.O.W. and Arizona state senator John McCain, live from Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam.

For what has become one of Today’s trademark series for the past four years, Lauer has broadcast live from remote locations around the world for the “Where in the World is Matt Lauer” annual trip. In the spring of 1998, Lauer reported from the Great Pyramids in Egypt, the Grand Canal in Venice, the Parthenon in Athens, the Taj Mahal in India and the Sydney Opera House in Australia. In 1999, his week-long adventure took him to Mount Everest, aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt stationed in the Adriatic Sea, to the Coliseum in Rome and to the Great Wall of China. In 2000 he covered more than 39,000 miles, stopping at the Kilauea volcano in Hilo, Hawaii, Bilbao, Spain, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Pisa and Florence in Italy and Iceland. For the 2001 trip, his stops included Machu Pichu, Peru, an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, Paris, Bangkok and Mykonos, Greece.

Prior to joining WNBC-TV, Lauer hosted a daily, live, three-hour interview program, 9 Broadcast Plaza, in New York from 1989 to 1991. Before that, his experience included hosting a number of weekly information and talk programs in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Richmond.

Lauer began his career in 1979 as a producer of the noon news on WOWK-TV in Huntington, West Virginia. In 1980, he was a reporter on the station’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.

Lauer is a graduate of Ohio University. He lives in New York with his wife, Annette Roque Lauer and their son, Jack.