Jane Pauley’s 13-year Today run began in 1976, and a photo retrospective now puts that stretch back in frame with dated images from October 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1981. The collection also tracks how she left the program in 1989, then came back for guest spots years later.
October 1976 and 1977
October 1976 is the starting point: Pauley first joined Today that month, wearing a gold earring and necklace set in a portrait taken around then. By 1977, she was already seated between Gene Shalit and Tom Brokaw in front of the Today news desk, and she interviewed John Travolta for Today after his success in Saturday Night Fever.
13 years on the morning anchor spot made Pauley a durable presence on the program, not a one-season hire. Tom Brokaw was her main co-anchor from 1976 to 1981, and the pairing is part of why those early photos still read like broadcast history rather than simple nostalgia.
May 1978 and October 1981
May 1978 adds another dated marker: Pauley was 27 and wearing a red-orange shirt with a paisley print. An October 1981 photo shows her in a black and gold dress, which places her on Today near the end of the Brokaw era and gives the retrospective a built-in timeline instead of a generic photo dump.
37 years is how long Gene Shalit served as a film and television critic on Today, so the 1977 image of Pauley between Shalit and Brokaw also captures how much institutional memory was packed into the set. One frame, three long tenures, and a morning show that had already settled into its own internal hierarchy.
1989 through 2013
1989 is the break point: Pauley officially departed Today after those 13 years, then co-anchored Dateline from 1992 to 2003 and hosted her own show from 2004 to 2005. In 2004, she also published Skywriting: A Life Out of Blue, and that memoir disclosed and detailed her experiences with bipolar affective disorder, giving the career timeline a more personal cost than the early photos suggest.
2009 and 2013 are the bridge back to the same program. Pauley made guest appearances on Today for the weekly segment Your Life Calling in 2009, then joined a reunion edition in 2013, even as she remained active and now hosts CBS News’ Sunday Morning.
Her long arc is the point: a face that started on Today in October 1976, left in 1989, and still returned often enough that the show could treat her as part of its living record. Pauley’s own line about Brokaw, calling him an “older brother” and joking, “I would have never named my son Tom if I'd had a bad relationship with Brokaw all those years,” fits that tone; the relationship behind the desk lasted long after the broadcast day ended.
