The folksy former anchor of NBC's Nightly News, these days Brokaw spends his time writing nostalgic books and working as a "special correspondent" for NBC.

A South Dakota native, Brokaw spent the mid-70s stationed in Washington, DC as the NBC White House correspondent, before moving to New York to host the Today Show alongside Jane Pauley. In 1981, he was made co-anchor of the NBC Nightly News with Roger Mudd, becoming the sole host of the show in 1983 upon Mudd's departure. During Brokaw's two-decade tenure, his stentorian voice and well-honed gravitas made him the most popular news anchor for much of the 1990s and early '00s; he invariably bested his rivals Peter Jennings at ABC and Dan Rather at CBS. In 2004, shortly after the presidential election, Brokaw retired, handing off the show to Brian Williams. He returned to the air in 2008 to add some gravitas to MSNBC's election coverage. Following the death of Tim Russert in June 2008, Brokaw temporarily served as host of Meet the Press until the end of the 2008 election. These days, he habitually pops up on various NBC programs as well as working on documentaries for other outlets.

Before retiring from NBC, Brokaw authored two bestselling books about the pre-Boomer generation: The Greatest Generation in 1998 and The Greatest Generation Speaks a year later. Since his semi-retirement, he's released several books with generic sentimental titles.

Brokaw married Meredith Lynn Auld, a former Miss South Dakota, in 1962. (They met when Brokaw interviewed her for a South Dakota radio station.) [Image via Getty]