Tom Brokaw on His ‘BIG Wake-Up Call’

In an essay for the wowOwow.com series “The Woman I Love“, NBC’s Tom Brokaw writes about wife Meredith.

The two began dating in college. Meredith became Miss South Dakota and earned good grades, while Brokaw dropped out after “too many parties, girls and booze”:

[Meredith] began refusing my calls and eventually wrote a strongly worded letter saying, in effect, “I am not interested in someone who is at such a dead end and who is such a disappointment to his family and everyone around him.”

It was a BIG wake-up call. I got a job in a local television newsroom and began commuting to school while working full time. My grades and deportment improved markedly but I had given up on Meredith, until one day she approached me and said she had been out of line to write such a harsh critique. I assured her it was just what I needed. One thing led to another and less than a year later we were engaged.

Married since 1962, Brokaw remains “in awe of Meredith’s cool, centered inner compass as she pursued her own life at a comfortable distance from my network profile.”

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