Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American television host, author, and liberal political commentator. She hosts The Rachel Maddow Show on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) and serves as the network's special event co-anchor [maddow-1]. She is known for long, research-heavy opening segments, which she calls the "A-block," and for a style that combines deep reporting with historical analogy and dry humor [maddow-1][maddow-2].
Maddow was born in Castro Valley, California. Her father, Robert B. Maddow, was a former United States Air Force captain who later worked as a lawyer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Her mother, Elaine (née Gosse), was a school program administrator [maddow-1].
She attended Castro Valley High School and was a competitive athlete in volleyball, basketball, and swimming [maddow-1]. She enrolled at Stanford University in 1990 and earned a bachelor's degree in public policy in 1994 [maddow-1][maddow-2]. She was a Rhodes Scholar and began postgraduate study at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1995. She turned down a Marshall Scholarship to take the Rhodes. She earned a DPhil in politics from Oxford in 2001. Her thesis, supervised by Lucia Zedner, was titled "HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons" [maddow-1].
Maddow has one older brother, David [maddow-1]. Her partner is artist Susan Mikula; the two met in 1999, when Maddow was working on her dissertation. The two split their time between Manhattan and western Massachusetts [maddow-1][maddow-2].
She came out publicly as a lesbian in a Stanford student newspaper interview while still a freshman, before she had told her parents [maddow-1][maddow-3]. She has described herself as a practicing Catholic and has said her family is "very, very Catholic" [maddow-1]. She has spoken openly about cyclical depression, which she has lived with since puberty [maddow-3].
Maddow's first broadcasting job was in 1999 at WRNX (100.9 FM) in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where she won a station contest to become the second host of a morning show [maddow-1][maddow-2]. She later hosted a program on WRSI in Northampton, Massachusetts [maddow-1]. In 2004 she joined the new Air America Radio network. There she co-hosted Unfiltered, and her own two-hour program, The Rachel Maddow Show, ran until Air America ceased operations in January 2010 [maddow-1][maddow-3].
In 2005 Maddow became a regular panelist on MSNBC's Tucker, hosted by Tucker Carlson [maddow-1]. In 2008 she substituted for Keith Olbermann on Countdown, and MSNBC then gave her the 9:00 p.m. Eastern slot that September [maddow-1]. After its debut the show topped Countdown as MSNBC's highest-rated show on several occasions [maddow-1].
By 2017 The Rachel Maddow Show was described as the number-one prime-time news program on cable television [maddow-2]. In 2022 the show moved to a weekly broadcast. In 2025 MSNBC, by then renamed MS NOW, brought her back to five nights a week for the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second presidency, and she later returned to a Monday-only schedule [maddow-1].
In 2013 The Washington Post announced a six-month run of monthly opinion columns by Maddow. In 2018 the New York Times published her first crossword puzzle [maddow-1].
Maddow describes herself as a liberal. In 2017 she said, "Oh, I'm a liberal for sure. I'm just not a candidate person," and said she was "not a huge fan of the Democratic Party" [maddow-2]. Wikipedia describes her self-description as a "national security liberal" [maddow-1].
She has stated her show's mission as "Increase the amount of useful information in the world" [maddow-2]. Her approach to the Trump administration was summed up in a rule she gave in 2017: "Don't pay attention to what they say, focus on what they do" [maddow-2].
On the press, she has said: "I am a cheerleader for the American media and I feel like the free press is going to be what saves us from the political crisis that we are in" [maddow-2]. In 2012 she argued that secrecy in national security lets elected officials avoid accountability: "Politically, secrecy is a great excuse" [maddow-3].
She has defended humor as a teaching tool. In 2012 she said, "I think that humor has underappreciated explanatory value" [maddow-3]. In 2025 she said, "Doing the right thing doesn't always pay off in the short run, but your country will ultimately get this right" [maddow-4].
[maddow-1] Wikipedia - Rachel Maddow
[maddow-2] Rolling Stone - Rachel Maddow: The Rolling Stone Interview (Janet Reitman, June 14, 2017)
[maddow-3] NPR - Rachel Maddow: The Fresh Air Interview (March 27, 2012)
[maddow-4] TIME - Rachel Maddow on What Her New Podcast Has to Do With Trump (Dec. 1, 2025)