The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks finally get Super Bowl 60 underway on Sunday night. The game will be called by NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew. Mike Tirico will be on play-by-play, and his partner, Cris Collinsworth, will provide analysis. Melissa Stark and Kaylee Hartung will be on the sideline.
The pregame crew will consist of Tony Dungy, Jason Garrett, Rodney Harrison, Devin McCourty, Chris Simms, and Mike Florio. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, linebacker Fred Warner, and former star Aaron Donald are also expected to be on hand. Maria Taylor will be tasked with keeping things together as the host.
Where and How Did Maria Taylor Grow Up?
Taylor hails from Cookeville, Tennessee, where her father was a coach at Tennessee Tech.
She attended Centennial High School in Roswell, Ga., where she excelled in both basketball and volleyball. At 6’2, she accepted a scholarship to the University of Georgia. Taylor played both sports in college and was an All-SEC volleyball player.
She moved on to become a reporter and host for the Bulldogs before moving to ESPN in 2013 as a sideline reporter. Taylor started as a Saturday night sideline reporter and worked her way up through the SEC Network before ultimately reporting from the 2018 National Title Game between Georgia and Alabama. She became the main college sideline reporter, working Saturday Night Football with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit.
At ESPN, she also worked as a host for NBA Countdown. Taylor left ESPN in 2021Â to join NBC for the 2020 Summer Olympics (which took place in 2021)Â and started on Sunday Night Football that season. Taylor again broadcast from the Olympics in 2024Â and now also works as a host for NBC’s NBA Coverage.
Is Maria Taylor Dating or Married?
Although she has been fairly quiet about her personal life, we do know that Taylor married businessman Jonathan Lee Hemphill in 2021. Hemphill is originally from England and attended Oxford before joining Google as a software engineer.
He is the co-founder of Paddle and helped develop the AI agency, Squared Circles, which collaborates with he likes of Nike and Adidas.
Taylor was previously married to Rodney Blackstock. They met at a Charlotte Hornets game in 2014Â and were married in 2019Â despite initially calling off their engagement in 2016. The two were officially divorced in 2021.
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Taylor made her pregnancy struggles known when she made a birth announcement on Instagram. Taylor referenced infertility issues and the process of going through IVF. That story does have a happy ending; eventually, Taylor gave birth to a child in 2023.
You can find Taylor hosting NBC’s pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage all day Sunday. Super Bowl 60 between the Seahawks and Patriots kicks off at 6:30 p.m. ET and airs on NBC.
