No one represents longevity in sports programming quite like Chris Berman. The quintessential commentator has been a mainstay of ESPN for more than three decades.
Chris Berman Biography
Christopher James Berman was born on the 10th day of May 1955 in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States. Although he was born in Connecticut, he spent most of his early childhood in Irvington, New York.
Chris’s mother, Peggy Shevell, was a journalist and also a Times Magazine researcher at the time. His father, James Keliner Berman, was executive vice president. Chris had a fairly decent middle class upbringing. He was enrolled at Hackley School in 1970. He graduated from college in 1977 with a degree in history from Brown University, where he acted as athletics director for the school’s radio station.
His first job was as a sports anchor at WVIT-TV of Hartford. The job that propelled Chris to national prominence was his time at ESPN where he joined in 1979, just a month after the station was founded. He is currently the longest serving employee of the network along with Bob Ley.
He is currently the host of ESPN’s first game show and after his 55th birthday, he signed a new contract for an undisclosed period. When the contract expired, his contract was renewed to keep him in the job for the foreseeable future.
During his time at ESPN, Chris Berman has served and worked on numerous sports-related shows and anchored many games. Among those many shows mentioned above is the NFL Sunday Countdown which he has hosted since 1985. In addition to Sunday, Chris also hosts Monday Night Countdown, The US Open and Major League baseball to name a few.
Chris was inducted into the Brown University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991. In May 2007, Brown University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters for his accomplishments in broadcasting.
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It should come as no surprise that Chris Berman has received numerous awards and accolades. He was named National Sportsman of the Year in 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 2001 by the National Sports Media Association.
Chris Berman was the first sports journalist to receive the Newseum Institute’s Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in Media. In 1995 and 2005, he was on Sporting News’ list of the 100 most influential people in sports and was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2015.
What happened to Chris Berman’s wife?
Chris Berman’s wife Katherine was a schoolteacher in 1983 when they met and got married. She had to stop teaching to help raise the children in 1985. Chris and Katherine had two children. a daughter named Meredith and a son Douglas.
Tragedy struck Chris Berman and his family in the beginning of May 2017, when Katherine Berman, aged 67, died from blunt force trauma and drowning. She lost her life when her Lexus SUV crashed into another car and viciously veered off the road to land on top of a nearby lake. The driver of the other car, Edward Bertulis, 87, suffered multiple injuries and was taken to hospital after his own car crashed into a utility pole. He died in hospital.
Investigations into the incidents revealed that Edward Bertilus had just returned from his wife’s grave and was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident.
Chris only found out hours later when a group of cops broke the news to him while watching his favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, play in Queens. Katherine died just a day before her husband, Chris North Dakota’s birthday.
Net salary
A man who has worked for more than three decades at ESPN’s top tier should have a very healthy net worth and Chris is no exception. He currently commands a net worth of around $20 million. As an integral member of the ESPN family, Berman is one of the highest paid workers and earns an annual salary of around $3 million.
Size weight
Chris Berman is quite a giant of a man and stands at an extremely impressive height of 195cm which measures 1.95 meters (6 feet and 5 inches). Details of his weight are not available to us at this time.
