Terry Gannon is a veteran sports broadcaster who is co-hosting NBC’s coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony in Milan, Italy, on February 6, 2026.
Gannon, 62, is joined by veteran Olympics broadcaster Mary Carillo and three-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White for NBC and Peacock’s live coverage of the ceremony at Milano San Siro Olympic Stadium. Carillo was brought in this week after TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie withdrew because of her mother’s disappearance.
While Gannon has hosted four consecutive Olympic Closing Ceremonies for NBC — including PyeongChang, Tokyo, Beijing and Paris — the Milan Cortina Opening Ceremony is his first. The 2026 Winter Games mark Gannon’s ninth Olympic assignment overall, according to NBC Sports. He won a Sports Emmy as part of NBCUniversal’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics, which was honored as Outstanding Live Special.
Gannon is also NBC’s lead play-by-play voice for figure skating, a role he has held for the past three Winter Olympics alongside 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski and three-time U.S. national champion Johnny Weir. Before all of that, he was a college basketball player who helped win one of the most famous NCAA championships in history.
Here’s what you need to know about Terry Gannon:
Terry Gannon Is Married to His Wife Lisa & They Have 2 Kids, Including a Daughter Who Followed Him Into Broadcasting
Gannon has been married to his wife, Lisa Gannon, since 1987. Celebrity Net Worth reported that the couple married in 1987. Terry has said he first met Lisa in Greensboro, North Carolina, while he was covering one of his early assignments, the ACC tournament.
Terry and Lisa have two children together, a son named Jake and a daughter named Madeleine, who goes by Maddie. According to NBC Sports’ official bio, the family resides in Los Angeles.
Maddie followed her father into the media business. According to her KGET bio, she earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in sports media industries from the University of Southern California in May 2020, then received her master’s in journalism from USC in August 2021. She joined KGET in Bakersfield, California, in November 2021 as a reporter covering politics and local government. She has since moved on to work as a political news reporter for Spectrum News in Washington, D.C., covering the White House, according to her website.
Terry and Lisa’s son, Jake, also lives in the Los Angeles area, according to Gannon’s NBC Sports bio.
Celebrity Net Worth reported that in November 2005, Terry and Lisa paid $2.2 million for a house in Los Angeles.
Terry Gannon Was a Member of NC State’s 1983 ‘Cardiac Pack’ That Won One of the Most Famous NCAA Championships Ever
Before he became a broadcaster, Gannon played college basketball at North Carolina State University from 1981 to 1985 under legendary coach Jim Valvano. He was a member of the 1983 Wolfpack squad known as the “Cardiac Pack,” which pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NCAA Tournament history.
NC State defeated the heavily-favored Houston Cougars, 54-52, to win the national championship on Lorenzo Charles’ game-winning dunk at the buzzer, according to WRAL. Gannon was on the floor for the play. He played a direct role in the win, drawing a charging foul on Houston star Clyde Drexler early in the game that saddled Drexler with foul trouble, according to Wikipedia’s account of the championship game.
Gannon was one of the best shooters in the country that season. According to his NBC Sports bio, he was a two-time Academic All-American and NC State’s all-time leading free throw shooter during his career. He hit 85.4% of his free throw attempts and was ranked the second-most accurate free throw shooter in Wolfpack history, according to Wikipedia.
WRAL noted that the 1983 team’s improbable run was chronicled in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Survive and Advance.” The team was inducted into NC State’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.
In 2024, Gannon was one of 10 former players from the 1983 team who sued the NCAA over name, image and likeness compensation, ESPN reported, alleging that the NCAA had profited from replays of their tournament victories for more than 40 years without compensating the players. A North Carolina judge dismissed the case in August 2025, according to WRAL.
Terry Gannon Is 62 & Was Born in Joliet, Illinois, Where His Father Coached Basketball & His Mother Taught Tap Dance
Terrance Patrick Gannon was born on November 1, 1963, in Joliet, Illinois, according to Wikipedia.
His father, Jim Gannon, was a basketball coach at Joliet Catholic High School. His mother, Mary Gannon, taught tap dance for 30 years. According to the Raleigh News & Observer, Jim recommended that his son take four years of tap dancing lessons from his mother because he believed it would help with his coordination on the basketball court.
Terry Gannon attended Joliet Catholic, where his father was the basketball coach, and played both basketball and baseball. He graduated in 1981 and went on to study history at NC State.
After earning his degree in 1985, Gannon worked for a year as a graduate assistant for Valvano and briefly played professional basketball in Europe. But Valvano steered him away from a playing career. Gannon has credited Valvano for his career in broadcasting, noting that the coach told his players basketball “shouldn’t be your entire life, it shouldn’t consume you.”
He Has Covered Everything From the Tour de France to the FIFA World Cup & Has Been Called One of TV’s ‘Most Versatile’ Announcers
Gannon has been in the broadcasting business for close to four decades, and he has covered more sports than most announcers see in a lifetime. NBC Sports has called him one of its “most versatile voices.”
He started in 1986 on Valvano’s TV and radio shows doing regional basketball games. From 1990 to 1994, he was the announcer for the Charlotte Knights, a minor league baseball team. He joined ABC in 1991 as a college basketball commentator and as an announcer on the weekly series “Wide World of Sports.”
An unexpected phone call from ABC changed everything. “I got a call Monday morning from the executive producer at ABC, and [he] said, ‘We need you to go to Tokyo next week,'” Gannon told WRAL in 2022, recalling how he was first asked to cover figure skating. “Because I played for a guy able to take on every challenge and other aspects of life, I was able to say yes and quickly figure out how to do it.”
Over two decades at ABC and ESPN, Gannon’s resume grew to include college football, the NBA, WNBA, PGA Tour, Champions Tour, horse racing, tennis, beach volleyball, skiing, supercross motorcycle racing and mountain biking. According to his NBC Sports bio, he hosted the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the 2004 Indianapolis 500, the 2006 Belmont Stakes and the Tournament of Roses Parade for six years. He also announced the Tour de France three times.
Gannon joined the Golf Channel and NBC Sports in 2010 and has served as a play-by-play announcer for the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour since. NBC announced in 2025 that Gannon would also serve as a play-by-play voice for the NBA on NBC after the league returned to the network for the first time in more than 20 years.
Terry Gannon Will Also Serve as NBC’s Lead Figure Skating Announcer at the Milan Cortina Games Alongside Tara Lipinski & Johnny Weir
In addition to his Opening Ceremony hosting duties, Gannon will call figure skating at the Milan Cortina Games for the fourth consecutive Winter Olympics. He’ll be joined once again by Lipinski and Weir, according to NBC Sports’ official commentator announcement.
The trio first worked together at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. According to Lipinski’s NBC Sports bio, Gannon was originally brought on as a backup for NBC’s daytime figure skating broadcasts, but the three recognized their chemistry and asked to call the competition together. Their commentary at Sochi helped the network post the 10 best weekday daytime audiences in NBC history. They were officially named NBC Sports’ lead figure skating announce team in October 2014.
Lipinski has spoken about what makes the partnership work. She told the Boston Globe in March 2025 that “the three of us always feel like we can say exactly what’s on our minds, and our hope is that the viewers at home are learning about the sport but also have a little fun, because it’s entertainment, as well.”
During a January 2026 NBC media conference call, Weir talked about the bond between the three broadcasters. “That trust in one another and the honest joy that we have sitting with each other,” Weir said. “Just every opportunity that we have together makes it deeper and stronger.”
NBC and Peacock will present live coverage of the Opening Ceremony on Friday beginning at 2 p.m. EST. Primetime coverage begins at 8 p.m. EST on NBC and Peacock. Five reporters will be stationed across the geographically expansive ceremony, with Snoop Dogg stationed in Cortina. Mike Tirico will contribute to the broadcast from Northern California, where he is preparing to call Super Bowl LX on Sunday, according to NBC Sports.
Terry Gannon: Who Is the NBC Host for the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony?