Geraldo Rivera Net Worth

Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera is an American attorney, talk show host and reporter with an estimated net worth of $15 million. He was born on July 4, 1943 in New York City. His mother is Lillian and his father is Cruz Rivera. His mother was a waitress and his father a cab driver who also worked in restaurants to make ends meet. His childhood was not one with a lot of money or affluence, but his parents worked hard to ensure that their family was all right and that they had all they needed. Raised a devout Jew, his family put a lot of emphasis on their religion as well as on education. As a child, he states that his family experienced their share of racism and harsh treatment, but they that were able to overcome their treatment and move on from it.

Geraldo Rivera’s family was very adamant that he would become educated and do better for himself than they could do for him, sending him off to college. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Arizona in 1965. During his time in college, Geraldo Rivera was part of the lacrosse team as well as the rowing team. He took some time to see where a career in law enforcement would take him as an investigator for the New York City Police Department. He quickly realized that he would rather become an attorney, so he became a student at Brooklyn Law School.

While representing a Latino group, ABC was impressed with his work and decided to help him study journalism and broadcasting, asking him to change his given name of Gerald to Geraldo, and hiring him after he was done with his summer program at Columbia University. He was a reporter in the early 70s, and he began hosting shows not long after he was first hired. He was a very catchy on-air personality and people just adored that he was who he was. He resonated well, and he was given a job as a correspondent on the hit morning show Good Morning America. It wasn’t long before he was given his own talk show. Much of his net worth was accumulated by the work he has done in television, as he did not work in law long enough for him to make much money from that.

Geraldo, the talk show he began hosting in the 80s, ran for 11 years. The show garnered much criticism by the press and even politicians as someone with a law degree and a long history on television working real news stories and real issues within the world would take to filming trash television with controversial guests and trashy situations. He did not care, though, as he was being paid very well to run the show. For the past several years, he’s been a news correspondent on special assignment, and he is currently appearing on the hit show Dancing with the Stars, on which he shows very little aptitude for dance in any way.

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