April 21: News anchor and country singer, Robin Meade, is 44-years-old today.

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Robin Michelle Meade was born April 21, 1969 in New London, Ohio. she graduated from Ashland University, with a major in programming and performance. In 1992 she became Miss Ohio, and was a semi-finalist in the Miss America pageant.

Meade began her career in broadcasting as a reporter at WMFD-TV in Mansfield, Ohio. She then worked as an anchor and reporter at WCMH-TV in Columbus, Ohio, and at WJW-TV in Cleveland. Later, she got a job as the morning news anchor of WSVN-TV's Today in Florida and also served as the station's noon anchor and health reporter.

She then worked at NBC Chicago affiliate WMAQ-TV where she started anchoring the morning newscasts and then co-anchored the weekend newscasts and also served as a general assignment correspondent for the station. During her tenure with the NBC affiliate, she covered the 1996 Olympics, which included special reporting on the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.

She then joined HLN (then known as CNN Headline News), where she works now. Among many other stories, Meade anchored the network's coverage of Operation Enduring Freedom as well as that from Operation Iraqi Freedom in spring of 2003. She is based in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta. Her first day on-air at HLN was September 11, 2001.

Robin with CNN president Jeff Zucker

Meade hosts Morning Express with Robin Meade on HLN on weekday mornings, along with Ryan Smith, Bob Van Dillen, Jennifer Westhoven and Carlos Diaz. She wrote a book titled, Morning Sunshine!: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It Too. It was released on September 10, 2009. She has referred to it as a "non-fiction / motivational / inspirational / how-to / autobiographical book." It debuted at No. 12 on the "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous" section of the New York Times Best Seller list.

Robin is a host on the Oprah Winfrey Network show Ask Oprah's All Stars with Dr. Phil McGraw, Suze Orman and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

On June 21, 2011, Meade released a country music album titled Brand New Day. A single, "Dirty Laundry," was released to country radio. Her second album, Count of Me, was released in June 2013.


Meade was featured on the cover of the January/February 2011 issue of Making Music magazine and in an article about her experiences with recreational music. She has also sang the national anthem at NASCAR events.

In 2002, Meade was recognized by Lycos as one of the top 20 most popular television news personalities in the broadcast news industry. In 2004, she was voted "Sexiest Newscaster" by a Playboy.com online poll, with 40% of the vote.

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