‘Today’ Anchors Pay Tribute to NBC Anchor Wendy Rieger Following Her Death

“Today” anchors Savnnah Guthrie and Craig Melvin remembered their former NBC colleague, journalist Wendy Rieger, who died over the weekend at 65.

“We loved Wendy,” Guthrie said on Monday’s show. 

“We both worked with her at WRC. She worked on the weekends,” Guthrie continued, referring to herself and Melvin, as “Today” played a slideshow of photos of Rieger. “I love looking at those pictures because they’re so Wendy. There’s so much joy. She had just a little kind of a tone of mischief. She had quirks and was irreverent and funny and she was a great colleague that well all looked up to.”

Melvin called his former colleague, “a special one.”

“They broke the mold when they made Wendy Rieger. She will be missed,” he said.

Rieger had been diagnosed with a brain tumor last summer, and died on Saturday following her battle with Glioblastoma, with her husband holding her hand, Melvin said. She died two days shy of her 66th birthday.

Rieger worked at Washington, D.C.’s NBC News4, WRC-TV.

She wrote a note to her newsroom as she signed off after 33 years on the air.

“As you know, I have lived my life big and loud. It is my nature. And I’ve had a blast. But a stillness has come over me that is profound and potent. I didn’t know I could be this quiet. Life is not always a test. It is a teaching. I must learn this lesson with grace. And I will,” she shared.