Roker was born in the New York City borough of Queens, the son of Isabel, who was of Jamaican heritage, and Albert Lincoln Roker Sr., a bus driver of Bahamian descent. He aspired to be a cartoonist at first. He was raised Catholic, as was his mother, and attended Xavier High School in Manhattan. He earned a B.A. in communications from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1976.
While attending SUNY Oswego, Roker worked as a weather anchor for CBS station WHEN-TV (now WTVH) in Syracuse, New York from 1974 to 1976. During his stay at Oswego, he also DJ’d at the school radio station, WNYO. Following the completion of his studies, Roker relocated to Washington, D.C., and accepted a weather casting position at independent station WTTG, then owned by Metromedia, where he stayed for the following two years.
Roker’s NBC career began in 1978 when he was employed at WKYC in Cleveland, an NBC-owned-and-operated station at the time. Roker was promoted to the network’s flagship station, WNBC-TV in his hometown, after five years in Cleveland. Roker returned to New York City as a weekend weathercaster in late 1983, and within eight months had become the station’s regular evening weathercaster. Roker took over for Dr. Frank Field, a 27-year WNBC-TV veteran who departed the network due to a contract dispute. From 1983 through 1996, Roker was a regular substitute for NBC News forecaster Joe Witte on NBC News at Sunrise, and from 1990 to 1995, he stepped in for Willard Scott, Bryant Gumbel, and Matt Lauer on the Today Show. He took over as host of The Al Roker Show, a weekend talk show on CNBC, in 1995.
How many times has Al Roker married?
Roker married WNBC producer Alice Bell in December 1984, after an earlier marriage and divorce. In 1987, he and Bell adopted their daughter Courtney as an infant. Roker and Bell eventually divorced. On September 16, 1995, Roker married TV journalist Deborah Roberts. They have a daughter named Leila (born November 17, 1998) and a son named Nicholas (born July 18, 2002).
