Christopher Charles Cuomo is an American television journalist, best known as the presenter of Cuomo Prime Time, a weeknight news analysis show on CNN. Cuomo is the brother of New York GovernorAndrew Cuomo and son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Cuomo has previously been the ABC News chief law and justice correspondent and the co-anchor for ABC's 20/20, and before his current show, he was one of two co-anchors of the weekday edition of New Day, a three-hour morning news show, until May 2018.
Early life and education
Cuomo was born in the New York City borough of Queens. He is the youngest child of Mario Cuomo, the former Governor of New York, and Matilda Cuomo, and the brother of Andrew Cuomo, the current Governor of New York. His parents were both of Italian descent; his paternal grandparents were from Nocera Inferiore and Tramonti in the Campania region of southern Italy, while his maternal grandparents were from Sicily. Cuomo was educated at The Albany Academy, a private university preparatory day school in Albany, New York, followed by Yale, where he obtained an undergraduate degree, and Fordham, where he obtained his Juris Doctor in 1995. He is a licensed attorney.
Career
Cuomo's early career in journalism included appearances related to social and political issues on CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. He was a correspondent for Fox News and Fox Broadcast Network's Fox Files, where he covered a wide range of stories focusing on controversial social issues. He also served as a political policy analyst for Fox News. At ABC and as co-anchor of 20/20, his coverage included a look at heroin addiction. His year-long coverage revealed the heroin addiction affecting suburban families. His other work has included coverage of the Haiti earthquake, child custody, bullying, and homeless teens. Policy change has come after his undercover look at for-profit school recruiters, leading to an industry cleanup; and Cuomo's tip from a BMW owner led to a recall of over 150,000 affected models. From September 2006 to December 2009, he was the news anchor for Good Morning America. He was the primary reporter on breaking news stories, both in the U.S. and around the world, including dozens of assignments in some 10 countries. He covered the war on terrorism, embedded on multiple occasions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the U.S., he covered shootings such as Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and the Pennsylvania Amish school shootings, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Sago Mine collapse, and the Minneapolis bridge collapse in August 2007. He anchored morning and evening coverage. During his time at ABC, he had a website, "Cuomo on the Case," as well as two weekly digital programs: The Real Deal and Focus on Faith. He also appeared with Father Edward Beck on ABC News Now, the network's 24-hour digital outlet. In February 2013, Cuomo moved to CNN to co-host its morning show. He made his debut on CNN as field anchor on the February 8, 2013, episode of Piers Morgan Tonight, covering the February 2013 nor'easter. In March 2018, while serving as the co-anchor of CNN's morning show New Day, it was announced that Cuomo would move to primetime to host Cuomo Prime Time. In October 2017, sister network HLN premiered a new documentary series hosted by the anchor, Inside with Chris Cuomo, which focuses on "stories affecting real people, in real towns and cities across America." In September 2018, he began hosting a two-hour weekday radio show "Let’s Get After It" on the P.O.T.U.S. channel on SiriusXM.
Awards
Cuomo has received multiple Emmy Award nominations. His Good Morning America profile of the 12-year-old poet Mattie Stepanek was recognized with a News Emmy, making Cuomo one of the youngest correspondents to receive a News Emmy in network news history. He has been awarded Polk and Peabody Awards for team coverage. His work has been recognized in the areas of breaking news, business news, and legal news, with the Edward R. Murrow Award for breaking news coverage, the 2005 Gerald Loeb Award for Television Deadline business reporting for "Money for Nothing?", and the American Bar AssociationSilver Gavel Award for investigating juvenile justice.
Personal life
In 2001, Cuomo married Gotham magazine editor Cristina Greeven in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Southampton, New York. They reside in Manhattan with their three children. Cuomo also owns a home in Southampton. On August 13, 2019, in Shelter Island, New York, Cuomo threatened to throw a heckler down a flight of stairs at a bar, and chastised him with profanity-laced insults after the man called him Fredo, in reference to the fictional character from The Godfather novel and films. Cuomo told the man that the use of the name "Fredo" was tantamount to "the n-word" for Italian-Americans, which caused debate on Twitter about the assertion. Cuomo addressed the incident publicly, tweeting his appreciation to his supporters but acknowledging that he "should be better than what oppose." Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuomo announced on March 31 that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19. Since then, he has broadcast his usual weekday program from his home, where he is quarantined. Cuomo later said he had a hallucination of his dead father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, as a result of symptoms from the disease. On April 15, Cuomo announced on his program that his wife, Cristina, tested positive for COVID-19, and on April 22, his wife revealed that their 14-year-old son Mario also tested positive for the disease.
