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David Letterman - People also ask

David Letterman spent 33 years redefining American late-night television, then walked away in 2015. At 79 he is back in the conversation, partly through his Netflix interview series, partly because CBS just shut down the franchise he built.

By · stats people · Updated September 1, 2026
David Letterman
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, U · CC BY 2.0

David Letterman is the person most responsible for what American late-night television sounded like between 1982 and 2015. Born in Indianapolis on April 12, 1947, he came up as an Indiana weatherman and radio host, moved to Los Angeles to write and do stand-up, and got his own NBC show, Late Night with David Letterman, in 1982. The tone he built there, ironic, hostile to showbiz convention, structurally weird, became the default setting for a generation of hosts who followed.

After being passed over for The Tonight Show in 1992, he moved to CBS and launched Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. He hosted it until May 20, 2015, finishing with 6,080 episodes across both networks, more than anyone in the history of American late night, Johnny Carson included. Stephen Colbert took the chair after him.

He did not vanish. Since January 2018 he has hosted My Next Guest Needs No Introduction on Netflix, a slower, longer-form interview format that suits him better than a monologue-and-desk structure ever did in his final CBS years. Season 6 arrived in December 2025 and a seventh has been announced for later in 2026.

What put him back in the news in 2026 was the end of the franchise itself. CBS decided to retire The Late Show entirely rather than recast it, and Colbert’s last episode aired in May 2026. Letterman was openly critical of the network’s reasoning, and appeared with Colbert in the run-up to the finale. It is an unusual position for a retired host: watching the institution you built get closed rather than handed on.

He lives largely out of public view in North Salem, New York, with his wife Regina Lasko, whom he married in 2009, and their son Harry, born in 2003. He is 79. Sources: Netflix, Variety, CBS News, Wikipedia.

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Letterman's main home is in North Salem, New York, a rural town in northern Westchester County about an hour north of Manhattan, where he owns a large estate reported at around 108 acres. He has also long been associated with a ranch property in Montana. He does not publicise addresses, and nothing beyond what he has confirmed publicly should be assumed.

American. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, grew up there, and studied at Ball State University in Muncie before starting out as a local weatherman and radio host in Indiana. That Midwestern, deadpan register never really left his on-air voice.

He was born on April 12, 1947, which makes him 79 as of September 2026. He turns 80 in April 2027. For context, he was 35 when *Late Night* launched on NBC in 1982 and 68 when he signed off from CBS in 2015.

He is usually listed at around 6 ft 2 in (about 1.88 m), though celebrity height trackers put him marginally under that, closer to 6 ft 1.5 in. There is no official figure, so treat the number as a widely repeated estimate rather than a verified stat.

Not in a nightly slot. Since 2018 he has hosted My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman on Netflix, a long-form interview series that runs in short seasons rather than daily episodes. Season 6 premiered in December 2025, and a seventh season has been announced for later in 2026, with guests reported to include Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and Alex Honnold. Sources: Netflix, Variety.

He announced his retirement in April 2014 and hosted his final *Late Show* on May 20, 2015, handing over to Stephen Colbert. Letterman framed it as a decision about timing rather than any single event: he had been on late night since 1982, had undergone quintuple bypass surgery in 2000, and had a young son at home. He was 68 when he signed off.

6,080 across NBC's *Late Night with David Letterman* (1982 to 1993) and CBS's *Late Show with David Letterman* (1993 to 2015). That total made him the longest-serving late-night talk show host in American television history, passing Johnny Carson's record.

He was blunt. After CBS announced it was ending the entire *Late Show* franchise rather than just replacing Stephen Colbert, Letterman publicly accused the network of acting to save money and, in widely reported comments, called CBS's handling of it dishonest. He and Colbert also filmed a bit throwing furniture off a CBS building roof. The show he built at CBS ended with Colbert's final episode in May 2026. Sources: Variety.

Yes. He married Regina Lasko on March 19, 2009, after a long relationship. They have one son, Harry Joseph Letterman, born November 3, 2003. Letterman was previously married to Michelle Cook in the 1960s and 1970s.

There is no verified, independently audited figure in the public record. Estimates circulating online run into the hundreds of millions, driven by his CBS contracts, his ownership stake in Worldwide Pants, which produced *Everybody Loves Raymond* among other shows, and the syndication income that followed. Those numbers are speculative. What is documented is that he was among the highest-paid figures in American television for two decades.

He grew it after leaving CBS in 2015 and has kept it since, and it has become the visual shorthand for his post-late-night life. He has joked about it repeatedly in interviews, framing it as one of the small freedoms of not having to appear on camera five nights a week.

Worldwide Pants Incorporated is Letterman's production company, founded in the 1990s. Beyond producing his own shows, it produced *Everybody Loves Raymond*, one of the most commercially successful sitcoms of its era, and *The Late Late Show* in its Craig Ferguson years. It is a large part of why his career finances look nothing like a salaried host's.

Yes, once, in 1995, for the 67th Academy Awards. The reception was rough at the time, and his "Oprah, Uma" bit became shorthand for a host misjudging the room. Letterman has revisited it in interviews with a mix of self-deprecation and mild irritation at how long it followed him around.

Availability is patchy. Selected *Late Show* and *Late Night* material circulates on official YouTube channels, and clips have been widely archived, but there is no complete streaming run of 6,080 episodes anywhere. His current work, *My Next Guest Needs No Introduction*, is a Netflix exclusive.

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