The TODAY anchor desk has changed now that Craig Melvin is the new co-anchor alongside Savannah Guthrie, but that doesn’t mean Craig’s morning routine will. Not much, anyway.
“My object in the morning is very simple: Do not awaken my wife, two small children or our puppy,” Craig shares with TODAY.com.
Instead, he lays out his clothes the night before to ensure he doesn’t disturb his sleeping family, which includes his wife, Lindsay Czarniak, a sports broadcaster, and their two kids, Delano, 10, and Sybil, 8. It’s a process that he says takes him less than 25 minutes from start to finish.
“I take great pride in the speed with which I can get out of the house,” the TODAY co-anchor says.
It’s a familiar routine for Craig, who joined the TODAY team in 2018 and is well-accustomed to early mornings. But since taking over as co-anchor of the show after Hoda Kotb’s exit on Jan. 10, his wakeup time has gotten considerably earlier.
“(My alarm) used to go off at 4:15 a.m. if there was something big happening that morning, 4:30 a.m. if it was a slow morning,” he says.
And now?
“I have to get up at 3:45 a.m,” says Craig. “Which when you say it out loud, it’s like, ‘Ooh, that stinks. That stinks,’” he jokes.
With such an early wake-up call, Craig says his goal is to be in bed by 8:30 or 9 p.m. during the workweek. He even practiced his new schedule ahead of his first day on the job.
“My wife is going get a medal at some point for putting the kids down most nights, except weekends. I’ll pick up the slack on weekends. But that’s the thing about the shift, you really have to commit to a regimen to make it work,” he says.
To ensure he doesn’t oversleep in the morning, Craig says he employs what he calls a “triple alarm system.”
“I’ve got my radio alarm clock that’s on my nightstand. Then I set two alarms on my phone, as well, just in case I oversleep one. It’s hard to oversleep all three.”
Equipped with his alarm trifecta, Craig says that he takes “great pride in the fact that I don’t snooze when the alarm goes off.”
From uplifting to ‘let’s get it going’
According to Craig, his 25-minute morning routine entails the usual rituals like showering and brushing his teeth. After that, “I take my multivitamin, I’ve got this electrolyte mix that I use. I take my allergy meds and I shave every morning. That’s it. That’s the end of the routine.”
Except for his commute, of course, which takes about an hour from door to door, during which Craig immerses himself in music.
“On the car ride in, I listen to gospel music. I’ve got a gospel playlist that I’ve created and cultivated over the last seven or eight years now and I usually listen to that for about the first 45 minutes,” he explains.
The last 15 minutes, however, are a different story.
“I switch over to the most ratchet hardcore hip-hop and rap that I can stand. It’s actually quite comical,” he says. “I go from uplift and inspiration to let’s get it going.”
