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Rachel Maddow is a familiar face to cable news viewers, particularly those who gravitate toward MSNBC.
Even those who aren’t familiar with her work are still aware of her at least to a degree.
They can’t quite place me.
Her journey to television screens has been as unlikely as it is fascinating.
“She was born grown-up.
She never talked baby talk,” her mother, Elaine Maddow, told theSan Francisco Chronicle.
Raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Rachel gravitated toward sports primarily basketball, volleyball, and swimming.
“I graduated from the local high school at seventeen and went to Stanford,” she said.
“Around this time I was realizing I was gay.
I was coming out to myself,” she told The New Yorker.
The stunt attracted the attention of the student newspaper,The Stanford Daily.
“It was empowering,” Maddow told the newspaper of the outpouring of support she’d received.
“There was a posse of people behind me.”
“They were shocked and upset and hurt,” she said.
These feelings were only compounded by learning about their daughter’s sexuality secondhand from a newspaper.
“It took a while for them to get over it,” Maddow admitted.
Her professors at Stanford still remember her as one of the brightest pupils they’d ever seen.
“I remember applying to a video store this was when we still had video stores!
and not getting a job,” she recalled when interviewed byCBS News' “Sunday Morning.
“Thankfully, she did find employment.
There were however, some complications that presented themselves at the outset.
Not only is Mikula 15 years Maddow’s senior, both were involved with other people at the time.
“But this was different,” Maddow added.
“We both had to extricate ourselves from other things.
Fortunately it was mutual.”
Their first date was unconventional, with the two visiting a firing range to shoot guns.
They’ve been together ever since.
Despite having zero radio experience and having never heard the show, Maddow gave the competition a shot.
Against all odds, she got the job as co-host of “Dave in the Morning.”
She toldSouthern Voice, “They hired me on the spot.
Radio came to me, I didn’t come to it.”
Maddow was under no illusion that she got the gig because of her skills or talent.
Eventually, she quit “Dave in the Morning” to focus on finishing up her doctoral dissertation.
“I thought I could be helpful,” she added.
“That’s how I got back into radio.”
“We’re not just waging a battle,” Maddow told Southern Voice at the time.
“We’re competing for ratings.”
In the years that followed, Maddow remained a mainstay on Air America.
Her association with the online grid ended in 2010 when it ceased operations after several years of financial struggles.
“She had clearly mastered it in 10 minutes,” Olbermann told theThe Kansas City Star.
Maddow was mystified by her sudden rise through the ranks of cable news.
“I don’t honestly know why MSNBC hired me.
I guess we got good ratings.
We didn’t suck,” she told The Guardian.
“But it’s a visual medium and it really does matter what you look like.”
“But once I did it, I knew I wanted to do more.”
“The idea was to do something cool with a platform that reaches a lot of people.”
“It’s a very small glass ceiling I’ve broken,” she joked toMother Jones.
Maddow is well aware that she’s far from the typical woman behind a news anchor desk.
“I’m a big lesbian who looks like a man.
Then again, she also admitted that she had no frame of reference.
Nevertheless, Maddow confirmed that Ailes played a big part in helping her shape her early career at MSNBC.
“I mean that was the basis of my professional friendship with Roger Ailes.
I wanted tips from him about how to be better on TV.
“It’s manageable.
Working, she explained, offered some respite but didn’t really address the root cause.
“It’s really a chemical thing,” she said.
“You get adrenaline from work, but adrenaline is not a cure.”
“Because it is nobody’s business,” she added.
So I felt it was a bit of a responsibility to pay that back.”
Her first book,“Drift: The Unmooring of Military Power,“was published in 2012.
In 2013, she signed on to write a monthly column for the esteemed newspaper.
At the same time, she also unveiled a related documentary special, “Betrayal.”
In 2022, fans were stunned whenMaddow announced some massive changes to her talk show.
With that announcement, it was clear that Maddow had taken on yet another role: media mogul.
