Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is an American political commentator, journalist, and author whose two-decade career has produced multiple defining 21st-century American progressive political-commentary roles — particularly her 2008–2022 lead host role on MSNBC's prime-time political-commentary program The Rachel Maddow Show. She was born Rachel Anne Maddow on April 1, 1973, in Castro Valley, California. Her father Robert B. Maddow was a former U.S. Air Force officer and post-Air-Force water-utility lawyer, and her mother Elaine was a Catholic school administrator. She attended Castro Valley High School and was a competitive swimmer and basketball player.

Her education at Stanford University (B.A. in Public Policy, 1994) — where she came out as a lesbian during her freshman year — launched her early-career path. Her 1995 Rhodes Scholarship to Lincoln College, Oxford produced her D.Phil. in Politics in 2001 (which she defended on the topic of HIV/AIDS and healthcare reform in U.S. prisons, after seven years of part-time research and dissertation writing across 1995–2001).

Her 1999 Pacific Northwest American radio career launch — when she won an audition for an early-morning DJ position at the WRNX-FM station in Holyoke, Massachusetts — launched her early-2000s American radio career. Her 2004 transfer to the Air America Radio progressive-political talk-radio network as the morning-drive co-host (with Chuck D and Lizz Winstead) produced her 2005 transfer to Air America's prime-time evening hours.

Her 2008 American MSNBC Olbermann substitute hosting (initially as a substitute for Keith Olbermann's Countdown with Keith Olbermann program) preceded her September 8, 2008 first-broadcast launch of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. The 2008–2022 weeknight prime-time program produced her 2010s American progressive-political-commentary public profile — including her 2017 and subsequent New York Times-bestselling political books (particularly her 2019 Blowout and her 2022 Bag Man on Spiro Agnew). She has been with American photographer Susan Mikula since 1999.

Her name Rachel derives from the Hebrew Rachel meaning "ewe" — the name of the Old Testament wife of Jacob. Rachel was the second-most-popular American girls' name through the 1990s.