Terry Gross Bio-Wiki, Age, Husband, Fresh Air, NPR and Net Worth

This article will answer every question you have about Terry Gross. Below are some of the frequently asked questions about her.

  1. What does Gross do for a living?
  2. Who are Gross’s parents and siblings?
  3. What are Gross’s interests and hobbies?
  4. Is Gross married or does she have a Girlfriend/ boyfriend?
  5. Does Gross have any children?
  6. Where is Gross now?
  7. How tall is Gross?
  8. How much money does Gross earn?
  9. What is Gross’s net worth?

N/B: Please read the entire post to have all your questions answered.

Who is Terry Gross?

Terry Gross is an American radio host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air. Fresh Air is an interview-based radio show produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and distributed throughout the United States by NPR. Gross has been in this position since 1975 and he has conducted thousands of interviews over her 42 years at the job.

She has won praise over the years for her low-key and friendly yet often probing interview style and for the diversity of her guests. Gross has a reputation for researching her guests’ work largely the night before an interview. She often asks them unexpected questions about their early careers.

She attended Sheepshead Bay High School from where she graduated in 1968. Gross earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a Master of Education degree in communications from the University at Buffalo. She started teaching 8th grade at an inner-city public junior high school in Buffalo in 1972. Gross said she was ill-equipped for the job, especially at establishing discipline, and was fired after only six weeks.

How Old Is Terry Gross?

Gross was born on February 14, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York City, United States. She is 70 years old as of 2021. She shares her birthday with other famous people such as Christian Eriksen, Freddie Highmore, Madhubala, Edinson Cavani, Jimmy Hoffa, Ángel Di María, Simon Pegg, Brett Dier, Carl Bernstein, Danai Gurira, Drew Bledsoe, Enrico Colantoni, Freddie Highmore, Jake Lacy, Jim Kelly, among others.

A photo of Terry Gross
A photo of Terry Gross

Terry Gross Family

Who are Terry Gross’s Parents?

She was born the second child of Anne and Irving Gross. Gross’s father worked in a family millinery business where he sold fabric to milliners and her mother is a stenographer. Gross was raised in a Jewish family. She also said that her family lived in an apartment near Senior’s Restaurant, a local landmark. People would often ask where Gross came from when she was young, assuming that her lack of a heavy Brooklyn accent meant she grew up elsewhere.

Her parents were first-generation Americans, with family roots in eastern Europe.

Does Terry Gross Have Siblings?

Gross has an older brother, Leon J. Gross, who works as a psychometric consultant.

Terry Gross Husband

Since 1994, she has been married to Francis Davis, jazz critic of The Village Voice. The couple has been together since 1978. Davis is Catholic while Gross is Jewish but neither of them is practicing. The couple resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and share a passion for music. The couple also has no children which Gross says was a deliberate choice on their part.

Gross was previously married to her high-school boyfriend who attended the same university. They had been married for about a year with whom she had been living for a while. She has said that she dropped out of college in her sophomore year to hitchhike with him across the country before they were married. Gross proceeded to obtain a divorce by the time she started her radio career in 1973.

Terry Gross Height

The talented interview guru stands at a medium height of 4 feet 11 inches.

Terry Gross Net Worth

Though Gross is believed to bring the network great profits through her podcast, her net worth is not yet disclosed.

Terry Gross Salary

Through her podcast, gross has quite a great audience hence bringing some good profit, Gross is believed to receive a great amount as annual salary but the exact amount is not yet revealed.

Terry Gross NPR

She began her radio career at WBFO, an NPR CPB-funded college station in 1973. She then went broadcasting from the Main Street Campus of the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York. There, she started out as a volunteer on a show called Woman Power, then co-hosted This is Radio. The normal topics of these shows were women’s rights and public affairs.

Terry Gross Podcast | Fresh Air Podcast

Gross moved to WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1975 to host and produce Fresh Air, which was a local interview program at the time. Fresh Air with Terry Gross went national in 1985 were also distributed weekly by NPR. The show became a daily program two years later.

She typically conducts the interviews from the WHYY-FM studios in Philadelphia. With Gross’ subject at the studio of a local NPR affiliate convenient to them connected via telephone or satellite feed. She is not face-to-face with her subjects for the majority of these conversations.

She creates a daily show that is an hour-long, usually includes two interviews, and is distributed to over 190 NPR stations. It reaches an audience of millions of daily listeners. Many of the show’s producers and staff have been with her since the late 1970s to 1980s.

Gross appeared as a guest voice on The Simpsons as herself, in the episode “The Debarted”. She was a guest lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism during the spring 1998 semester. Gross appeared on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me and played the game “Not My Job”, answering questions about Hulk Hogan in 2015.

Terry Gross Interviews | Best Terry Gross Interviews

Some of Gross’ interviews have not gone smoothly, She asked Nancy Reagan about the lack of funding and mishandling of HIV/AIDS by her husband, President Ronald Reagan, which was not well received.

There are a few interview subjects who have exited their interviews early, including Lou Reed, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Faye Dunaway, and Monica Lewinsky.

She interviewed Fox News television host Bill O’Reilly on October 8, 2003. On February 9, 2005, she interviewed conservative author and the wife of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, Lynne Cheney. She also interviewed the former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on June 12, 2014.

Terry Gross Gene Simmons

Her February 4, 2002 interview with Kiss singer and bassist Gene Simmons began with Gross not pronouncing Simmons’ original Hebrew last name to his liking. Gene dismissively replied to her that she pronounced without “flavor” because she had a “Gentile mouth”; Gross responded that she is Jewish.
During the interview, Gross asked Simmons about his studded codpiece, to which Simmons replied, “It holds in my manhood, otherwise it would be too much for you to take.”

Simmons also refused to grant permission for the interview to be made available on the NPR website. It appears in Gross’ book All I Did Was Ask, and unauthorized transcripts and audio of the complete original interview are known to exist.

Terry Gross Book

  1. Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Just for Laughs – Interviews with 18 Stars of Comedy – 2010
  2. Fresh Air: Just For Laughs – 2010
  3. NPR: The First Forty Years – 2010
  4. Fresh Air: Faith, Reason and Doubt – 2008
  5. All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors Musicians, and Artists – 2004
  6. All I Did Was Ask: Interviews from Fresh Air with Terry Gross – 2004
  7. Writers Speak: A Collection of Interviews with Writers on Fresh Air with Terry Gross – 2002
  8. Fresh Air Laughs – 1999
  9. Fresh Air on Stage and Screen – 1998