Debra (Debbie) Matenopoulos is a television host, journalist, and lifestyle expert, born on December 13, 1974 in Richmond, Virginia, US. She is of Greek ancestry. Matenopoulos’ parents are Nicolaos and Efrosini Matenopoulos who are both from Greece. Her birth name is Despina Matenopoulos, named after her grandmother.
She attended the Virginia Commonwealth University for one year before transferring to the School of Journalism at New York University (NYU). Matenopoulos started working at MTV as an intern, while she was still studying at NYU, and quickly moved up the ranks to become story coordinator for UnFiltered.
After a chance meeting with Barbara Walters she became a co-host on Walters’s new talk show The View in 1997. Matenopoulos was an instant hit at The View, parodied on Saturday Night Live and then invited on as a guest. She was abruptly let go from the show in 1999. Matenopoulos joined the TV Guide Channel after leaving The View in 1999. Debbie was invited back at The View in 2006 as a special guest co-host for a day.
In August 2004, Good Day Live brought in Matenopoulous to co-host the program. Despite massive promotion, including a mall-tour featuring Matenopoulos and Neville, Good Day Live was canceled by its syndicators in March 2005.
Debbie wrote and released in 2014 her first critically acclaimed and bestselling cookbook, It’s All Greek to Me. Matenopoulos considers this book her love letter to her family’s native Greece. She is proud to share her family’s favorite classic Greek recipes right from their own kitchens, and she journeyed to Greece to write and photograph the book.
Matenopoulos joined the celebrity and entertainment news TV show The Insider as the co-host in 2015, a position she held until the show’s cancellation on September 9, 2017. Debbie was subsequently named as a Special Correspondent for Entertainment Tonight.
In 2016, while still co-host of The Insider, Matenopoulos became co-host of The Home and Family Show, replacing Cristina Ferrare.
“I think probably the only reason I continued in this business after kind of being kicked around so much, so young,
was because of my father’s encouragement and his strength.”
Is Debbie Matenopoulos Greek?
Yes, Debbie Matenopoulos is Greek. Both of her parents immigrated to the United States from Greece.
In her own words, interviewed by Oprah’s “Where are they now?”:
Matenopoulos says it was her tight-knit Greek family that helped her get through the criticism. “I think probably the only reason I continued in this business after kind of being kicked around so much, so young, was because of my father’s encouragement and his strength,” she says.”
