Matt Lauer Divorce Awkwardly Referenced on Today

Awkward moments between news anchors aren’t that rare, whether on national shows or local programming. There are often Youtube worthy moments of hosts getting into embarrassing moments between themselves, or starting conversations that just get weird. This morning on Today, Meredith Vieira had a pretty cringe worthy moment of her own when she inadvertently brought up Matt Lauer’s material troubles.

Vieira and Lauer were discussing marriage on Today and when it is the right time in a person’s life to get married. Vieira mentioned that she had gotten married in her 30s, then asked Lauer when he had gotten married.

However, the mistake Vieira made is that most anyone would know that if they had read the tabloids over the years. Lauer’s various marital troubles in both his marriages have been pretty well publicized, including his divorce from his first wife.

Lauer got married in his early 30s to TV producer Nancy Alspaugh. They were married for seven years before getting divorced in 1996. Lauer’s second marriage, to model Annette Roque, has been the subject of much tabloid speculation recently.

Lauer was hit with divorce papers from Roque in September 2006. A divorce would be pretty hard on Lauer since the couple would have to split his $50 million wealth. However, Roque withdrew the divorce papers in October 2006, but speculation is still rampant on how strong the Lauer marriage is.

The Star did a story earlier this year which caught Roque not wearing her wedding ring, as it asked whether Lauer’s marriage was ending “again.” Nothing else has been reported on that front as of lately.

But Vieira’s little snafu has brought Lauer’s problematic material history back into attention. What made it worse for Vieira was Lauer’s obvious uneasiness when Vieira asked her question. Even the cameraman for Today was heard yelling “Nice!” a few seconds afterwards, as everyone backstage seemed to realize right away that it was the wrong question.

Lauer got back on track and delivered his tease for the marriage segment, while Vieira could only comment that she didn’t think she would live happily ever after at the end of this show.

Nothing else was made of it for the rest of the Today episode, but the damage was done for Vieira as the blogosphere had their snafu to go over for the day.

Sources

Newsbusters- “Vieira Veers Onto Matt’s Rocky Marital Road”

IMDb.com- “Matt Lauer: Biography” www.imdb.com/name/nm0005126/bio