How Brian and Jamie Stelter, News Anchors, Spend Their Sundays

NEW YORK — Married media duo Jamie and Brian Stelter reach distinct audiences. As traffic anchor and “Mornings on 1” co-host at NY1, Jamie Stelter, 38, wakes New Yorkers up and helps them navigate traffic snarls. And as chief media correspondent for CNN Worldwide and anchor of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday mornings, Brian Stelter, 34, breaks down the week’s top stories for a global viewership.

Brian Stelter is also a producer, whose book, “Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Daytime Television,” served as source material for “The Morning Show” on Apple TV Plus, where he served as a supervising producer. His next project, “After Truth: Disinformation and the Cost of Fake News,” an HBO documentary directed by Andrew Rossi for which he served as executive producer, will have its premiere March 19.

Ten years ago, the couple met when Brian Stelter, then a media reporter at The New York Times, asked Pat Kiernan, the NY1 anchor, to play matchmaker via Twitter. They live with their daughter, Sunny, 2, and infant son, Story, near Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

Trending Early

Brian Stelter: My alarm is set somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, depending on the news cycle. If I didn’t set an alarm, the kids would wake us up by 6:30 anyway. Lately they’ve been trending early.

Jamie Stelter: I like to say I gave birth to a rooster, not a child.

The Arrangement

Jamie Stelter: I give Story his first bottle of the day. If Brian is at work doing one of his early-morning reports, then we’re watching him on TV, making sure Sunny likes the color of the tie he’s wearing.

Brian Stelter: Let me interject. My show is on at 11, but sometimes they’ll have me on in the 7 a.m. hour to promote what’s coming on at 11.

Jamie Stelter: I make Sunny’s breakfast. We share some kind of fruit-eggs-toast situation, then our nanny comes around 8:30.

Brian Stelter: I usually go to the Starbucks four blocks away for a bacon Gouda sandwich and a cold brew. And I Uber to and from work, lest anybody think I have some fancy town car waiting for me.

Prep

Jamie Stelter: I’ll throw in a load of laundry, and a lot of times I’ll start to prep Story’s food for the week. I purée all his food. I try to sneak out to Whole Foods for Oatly oat milk, which is kind of a running joke. They don’t do a good job of stocking it. After that we load up the kids and go to the park. We pack all the food and all the toys in the stroller like we’re leaving for a day trip. It’s a little Clark Griswold.

The Woman in Between

Brian Stelter: At work, there’s lots of last-minute changes happening. I’m keeping an eye out for breaking news, then I’ll adjust things accordingly. Jamie always texts me at 10:40 to wish me a good show. One funny thing is that Jamie and I have the same makeup artist. She splits her time between CNN and NY1. What I love about it is that it’s this continuous conversation because she knows what Jamie’s been doing and she knows what I’ve been doing.

Sleep Rules

Brian Stelter: The show’s over at noon, and then I postgame with the producers. By 1 I’m starting to fade. I feel pretty exhausted. I feel like I have three jobs: the show, dad duty and the newsletter. A nap is crucial. I nap the same time Sunny naps, from 2 to 4.

Jamie Stelter: We have lots of sleep rules in our house. One is, he cannot come home until she’s already asleep. If he comes home and she’s awake, she’ll get riled up.

Brian Stelter: I look at the Wi-Fi cameras above each crib to be sure it’s OK. I’ve slept on the couch in my office before.

Selfies in the Backyard

Jamie Stelter: After naps, we’ll go back to the park for another round. We are so lucky to live so close. It’s literally our backyard. We always find it’s easier to be out of the house with the kids than inside.

Brian Stelter: We have just the right amount of recognizability, where we can be flattered by the attention and take some selfies, but it’s not distracting for the kids. What I like most is when people recognize Jamie but not me. That’s fun.

Early to Bed

Jamie Stelter: We have dinner at 5 or 5:30. Story has his bath and his bottle by 6:30, when Sunny and Daddy are playing crazy in the house — soccer or something. I get emotional when I put him down every night because he grows so fast. Then all of a sudden my alarm clock for the next day gets a lot more real. It’ll go off at 2:40 instead of 2:50 because I wash my hair on Monday. In an ideal world I’m asleep by 8:30.

More Sleep Rules

Brian Stelter: Once I say good night to Jamie, I pivot to the newsletter for CNN. I do it six nights a week. On a good night, I file to my editor at 10 and go to bed at 11 or midnight.

Jamie Stelter: One other sleep rule we have is that there should be no movement in our bedroom during the last hour of my sleep. If Brian’s already in there, he can’t get up to go to the bathroom. If he’s not in there yet, he can’t go in until I’m awake.

Love Letters

Brian Stelter: Every Sunday night, I start a new email to Jamie that becomes our email for the week. They’re what we call our love letters.

Jamie Stelter: It can be, “Story woke up and I had to soothe him” or “Don’t forget I have to go to this dinner on Tuesday.” Sometimes it can be romantic.

Brian Stelter: I like choosing the subject line because it sets the tone for the week. It’s a nice way to end the day, summing up our lives in an email.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .