Three minutes into Morning Joe today, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough acknowledged a Page Six story about their rumored romance. The story reported that Brzezinski and her husband of 22 years, WABC reporter Jim Hoffer quietly divorced last year. It went on to quote an NBC insider who said, “Everybody at 30 Rock knows they are a couple . . . They are constantly together, they arrive and leave events together, even on weekends. They are each other’s publicists and finish each other’s sentences. It’s the worst-kept secret in TV.”
As the show began this morning, Brzezinski said to Scarborough, “Can I get to the lead stories now?”
“There are a lot of lead stories,” Scarborough said, before Brzezinski added: “I will finish your sentence and start with politics.”
Scarborough, who’s been divorced since 2013, has been paired with Brzezinski since nearly the beginning of Morning Joe. From the TVNewser archive, we take you back to July 2007.
Brzezinski rejoined MSNBC in early 2007, having left CBS News. She anchored some news hours as well as prime time news updates including during Scarborough’s first MSNBC show Scarborough Country. The two hadn’t met, but Joe was intrigued when a friend told him that Mika was poking fun at him, when she read, in jest, “And now back to Scarborough Country.” A few weeks later, when Imus in the Morning was canceled and Morning Joe had been pitched, Mika was chosen as a news reader.
One morning, she refused to read a story about Paris Hilton and tore up the script. The moment went viral. And the rest is history.
Last October, Scarborough told TVNewser, “We’re having such a good time right now.” He and Brzezinski were in Chicago for an event to honor Mika’s mother, the sculptor Emilie Brzezsinki and as part of Mika’s Know Your Value gatherings.
They were inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame just last month. And for the just-concluded second quarter Morning Joe gave MSNBC its highest viewership ever in the 6-9 a.m. timeslot.
Whatever is going on, it seems to be working.