Meredith Vieira: "I feel ageless"

Halfway through the morning broadcast, Meredith Vieira dashes into the lobby of NBC's Studio 1A from the crowded Rockefeller Center plaza where she and the rest of the Today show team have been greeting fans. She stops to review her notes on the next guest, a hybrid-car expert, while a producer briefs her about schedule changes. It's been three years since Today's cohost landed what she calls the best job in the world, and although she hasn't entirely come to terms with rising at 2:30 A.M., she thrives on the pace, the variety, and, especially, the company of her colleagues. "They're amazing," she says. "They always have your back." Speeding to their own next segments, her teammates stop, unbidden, to give testimonials.

"Can I say something about Meredith?" offers news anchor Ann Curry. "She's one of the most generous people I know." Cohost Matt Lauer wants in. "Let me tell you about Meredith," he volunteers. "She's a pain in the ass. Her head is already so big we have to open both doors to get her out of here." The easy, teasing camaraderie the two share may be partly attributable to Vieira's having grown up with three brothers, the youngest child of a physician and full-time mom in East Providence, RI.

Family has always come first for Vieira, most publicly in 1991, when she left her prestigious job as a correspondent on 60 Minutes. "Steve Kroft and I started at the same time in 1989," she explains. "The deal was that for the first two years, we'd each do 10 stories, then move up to the regular load of 20 stories a season. Then I got pregnant in 1990, and I said, 'There's no way I'll get the 20 stories in, because I'll be taking a six-month maternity leave.' The executive producer, Don Hewitt, made it clear that I would have to get the 20 stories done, and that's when I left." During the nine years she was a cohost of The View, she won fans for being unflappable, good-natured, sometimes goofy, and always incisive — and for sharing the ups and downs of life with her husband of 23 years, writer Richard Cohen, and kids Ben, 20, Gabe, 18, and Lily, 16. (She jokes that she left The View because the children didn't want her talking about them on the air anymore). She's spoken candidly about how the family copes with Cohen's multiple sclerosis, which has affected his vision and mobility. "I think living with a parent who has a disability has given our kids an empathy they might not have had," she says.

Out on the plaza again, Vieira judges a talent show, poses for photos, hugs guest Jane Krakowski from 30 Rock, and shakes many hands (the team presses so much flesh that a giant Purell dispenser is mounted on the studio door). Before she speeds back inside for her next studio segment, she pats the shoulder of a gangly teenage fan, who sighs to his mom, "Meredith touched me." Us, too.