When the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks kick off on Sunday evening, NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew will be on the call at Levi’s Stadium. Mike Tirico will be on play-by-play, and his partner, Cris Collinsworth, will provide analysis.
On the sidelines will be Melissa Stark and the youngster, at least on this team, Kaylee Hartung.
Where and How Did Kaylee Hartung Grow Up?
Hartung was born to Joe, a pilot in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and an aviation company owner in the United States. Sadly, he died in a plane crash in 1996, witnessed by Hartung, her brother, and her mother.
Hartung credits this incident for helping her get into journalism.
Hartung graduated from Episcopal High School eight years later and graduated from Washington and Lee in Lexington, Virginia, after studying journalism and politics in 2007.
Hartung initially worked for CBSNews.com and had an internship at NBC that led to a job on Face the Nation.
One of Hartung’s first jobs in sports was at Cox Sports Television in New Orleans. That was where she got her first experience following the NFL while covering the New Orleans Saints. She also covered the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans, who were then known as the Hornets.
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She was then hired by ESPN to work for the Longhorn Network, eventually leading to a job on the SEC Network.
She left CNN in 2017 and, after a stint with ABC News, returned to the sidelines in 2022 for Thursday Night Football on Amazon. She soon joined the Today Show and returned to NBC Sports as a sideline reporter.
Is Kaylee Hartung Married?
Hartung, who also works with veteran announcers Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit at Amazon, has managed to stay out of the limelight, and details of her personal life have been hard to come by.
Hartung is not married, and she has not revealed whether she has any partner, whether long-term or short-term.
She has, however, been very open about one extremely personal part of her life. When Hatrung was 35, she decided to freeze her eggs. Hartung joined “Not Gonna Lie With Kylie Kelce” to explain her fertility journey.
“Something about that number and me sort of taking stock of where I’m at in my life struck me,” Hartung explained. “And I recognized we are also in the middle of a pandemic and I’m not traveling as much as I usually do for work. And I wanted to feel like I came out of the pandemic having accomplished something… that would’ve been harder to do otherwise.”
Hartung decided to be more open with this portion of her life because she herself found it very difficult to find information about infertility and wanted women to have access to know what she had learned.
“It was a definite journey, but I’m so glad I did it,” she added. “And I have been such a proponent of women who are even thinking about it, to do it.”
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Hartung does have some advice. “I still wish I would have done it younger,” she said. “And if your insurance covers it, definitely take the money and do it now. Don’t wait.”
Hartung will offer a different sort of insight from the sidelines on Sunday night. Super Bowl 60 kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET and airs on NBC.
