Ann Curry has spent more than four decades listening to other people. Now, further into a quieter chapter that has taken her from the anchor desk to the classroom, the veteran journalist keeps returning to the same three ideas: empathy as a discipline, aging as something to do with intention rather than dread, and a piece of advice from her late father that has guided every professional choice she has made. That advice, distilled over the years into a simple charge to do some good, still sits at the center of how she works and how she talks about a life well spent.
Curry is not chasing headlines these days. She teaches, she speaks, and she reflects, and those reflections keep circling back to the values her parents handed her. Here is a closer look at what she has said about empathy, aging and her father’s guidance, and the verified story behind each.
Key Takeaways
- Ann Curry, the seven-time Emmy Award winner and former Today co-anchor, has increasingly spoken about empathy, purpose and aging in recent talks and interviews.
- Her guiding philosophy traces back to her father, Bob Curry, a career Navy man who told her to build a life of service to others.
- Curry has described empathy not as a soft skill but as a practical tool that, in her words, can save lives.
- Since leaving NBC News in 2015, she has focused on storytelling that does good, including the PBS series We’ll Meet Again, and more recently on teaching young journalists.
- A 2019 episode of Finding Your Roots uncovered a family secret that deepened her lifelong belief in empathy for strangers.
Who Is Ann Curry
Ann Curry was born in 1956 in Guam, the daughter of Bob Curry, a United States Navy serviceman, and Hiroe, a Japanese woman whose father was a rice farmer. Her parents met in Japan during the Allied occupation after World War II, at a time when interracial marriages were still uncommon, and the family moved frequently as her father was stationed in different places. She grew up partly in Japan and later in Ashland, Oregon, and graduated from the University of Oregon with a journalism degree in 1978.
Her broadcast career began in local news in Oregon, where she became a station’s first female reporter, and she joined NBC News in 1990. She served as the news anchor on Today from 1997 to 2011, anchored Dateline NBC from 2005 to 2011, and became co-anchor of Today alongside Matt Lauer on June 9, 2011. Over her career she reported from war zones including Kosovo, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, covered the 2010 Haiti earthquake, delivered a live report to an American audience from the South Pole, and interviewed world leaders and multiple United States presidents. She is a seven-time Emmy Award winner and, throughout, became known for an interviewing style built on warmth and deep listening.
Her Father’s Advice to Build a Life of Service
The clearest through line in Curry’s story is the counsel she received from her father. She has recalled asking him what she should be when she grew up, and his answer has stayed with her for a lifetime. As she told the Los Angeles Times, he replied, “Whatever you do, do something of some service to someone else. Then and only then will you know, on your last dying breath, that it mattered that you were born.”
The Television Academy, in its archival interview with Curry, similarly notes that her father encouraged her to choose a career that would let her be of service to others. That single instruction shaped the kind of journalist she became, and later the kind of projects she chose. When she left NBC, she framed her mission in almost the same spirit, telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she wanted to do projects that do some good.
The advice mattered even more because of how her father lived it out to the end. Curry has spoken about receiving the Simon Wiesenthal Center Medal of Valor for her reporting on the genocide in Darfur shortly before her father died of cancer, with him there in the audience to see it. For a daughter raised on the idea that a life counts when it serves others, that moment closed a circle.
Why Empathy Sits at the Center of Her Work
If service is the goal, empathy is the method. Curry has argued for years that empathy is not sentimentality but a working tool, and she has made the case in unusually direct terms. Speaking to the Association of American Medical Colleges in 2020, she told an audience of physicians that the ability to listen deeply and connect had made her a better journalist and would make them better doctors. In that same period she described empathy as something with real, life-or-death stakes.
She has also connected empathy to the harder work of understanding people you disagree with. In a 2025 talk at the Yale School of Management, Curry recalled political debates with her father, who would tell her, “Well, Ann, I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to your own opinion.” Being present with someone across a divide, she said, requires a genuine desire to see them, and rests on a simple foundation: “It’s a recognition that every single human being on this planet has dignity.”
That belief also fuels her sense of why journalism matters. Writing for Guideposts, Curry described journalism as an act of faith in the future, arguing that knowing what is happening in the rest of the world gives people a chance to care, and that this empathy offers the greatest hope. It is a striking framing from someone who spent years in the world’s most painful places, and it explains why she has always gravitated toward the stories of people who are rarely heard.
The Family Secret That Deepened Her Empathy
Curry’s conviction about empathy for strangers took on a personal dimension in 2019, when she appeared on the PBS program Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr. The episode revealed that her father had been born out of wedlock, a fact he had carried as a lifelong sadness and a closely held secret. With the help of DNA research, the show identified her biological grandfather, a railroad worker who had struggled in life.
Reflecting on the discovery, Curry said that a well of empathy awakens in you for people you do not know but who are related to you. In a later interview with KLCS, she described visiting her father’s grave afterward with her siblings, pouring wine over it and telling him that the family finally knew who his father was, so that no one had to feel alone anymore. The story captures in miniature the values that run through her whole career: dignity extended even to a grandfather who was flawed and forgotten, and comfort found in connection.
What Aging With Grace Looks Like to Curry
The theme of aging with grace has a living model in Curry’s own family. In a 2007 Dateline segment, she profiled her father, Bob, who at 77 refused to act his age. A widower after 53 years of marriage, and living with heart disease, a defibrillator and a pacemaker, he volunteered as a hospital candy striper, taught tai chi, recited Kipling from memory, took up ballroom dancing and eventually fell in love again. He told his daughter that life is for the living, and that when he felt he was doing something useful for someone else, it made him want to do more.
That portrait of purpose in later life mirrors the path Curry herself has taken. Rather than clinging to the spotlight, she has moved toward work that feels meaningful to her, including mentoring the next generation of reporters. She has held office hours with students and spoken about trying to teach young people how to think about information, who they are working for and why. For Curry, aging with grace appears to mean the same thing her father modeled: staying open, staying curious and staying of use.
What Ann Curry Is Doing Now
Curry left NBC News in January 2015, after nearly 25 years, to found her own multi-platform media company. She returned to television in 2018 with the PBS documentary series We’ll Meet Again, which reunited people connected by momentous events in history, and the show returned for a second season in 2019. In the years since, she has kept a lower public profile while continuing to report, speak and teach, appearing at venues such as the Yale School of Management and public events in New York.
Away from the camera, she has spoken about embracing photography and describes herself as a global journalist. The overall shape of this chapter fits the values she has carried from the beginning: choosing work with meaning over visibility, and measuring a life by whether it helped someone else.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Ann Curry?
Ann Curry was born on November 19, 1956, which makes her 69 years old.
What was Ann Curry’s father’s advice to her?
She has recalled her father telling her to do something of service to others, saying that only then would she know, on her last breath, that it mattered that she was born. She has described her own mission in similar terms, as wanting to do work that does some good.
Why did Ann Curry leave the Today show?
Curry stepped down as co-anchor of Today in June 2012 after one year in the role, during a ratings slump for the program, in a widely reported and emotional on-air departure. She remained at NBC News as an anchor-at-large and international correspondent before leaving the network entirely in 2015.
What is Ann Curry known for?
She is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning journalist known for her empathetic interviewing style, her reporting from war zones and disaster areas, and for co-anchoring NBC’s Today show.
What is Ann Curry doing now?
Since leaving NBC in 2015, she has run her own production company, created the PBS series We’ll Meet Again, and turned toward speaking engagements and teaching young journalists.
Who are Ann Curry’s parents?
Her father was Bob Curry, a career United States Navy man, and her mother was Hiroe, a Japanese woman whose family were rice farmers. They met in Japan after World War II.
