Al Roker shows Memphis love on Instagram — the river, the fried chicken, the airport

Al Roker loves Memphis.

Or, more precisely: Al Roker loves those aspects of Memphis that he shares with his fans.

This is not surprising. A contributor to the "Today" show since 1990, the veteran "weather presenter" and "television personality" (per his Wikipedia biography) is a gregarious and apparently upbeat individual who enjoys sharing with his vast audience the good news about places, events and cuisines that tickle his fancy.

This week, he passed through Memphis, while traveling back and forth to Arkansas for a story set to air Thursday on the NBC morning show (now in its *71st* year on the network).

On his Instagram page Tuesday, he praised Memphis' riverside vistas, its redesigned airport and its fried chicken to his 942,000 followers.

"I was told that when I’m #memphis you have to stop by @gusfriedchicken They were right," wrote Roker, 69, somewhat ungrammatically, next to a picture of himself posing in front of the Gus's Fried Chicken sign outside the restaurant at 310 Front St., which he posted onto his Instagram page.

"You are too cute and too fun," responded a Roker follower identified on Instagram as "derristidd."

Roker also posted a video of himself walking in the morning along what he called "the Mighty Mississippi." The video was scored to the sounds of Marc Cohn's 1991 hit, "Walking in Memphis."

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"Couldn't pass up a chance to get some steps in along the Mississippi River, another of the great wonders of the world," Roker says in the video, before encouraging his followers to spend time walking in whatever city they happen to be in, because, "you see it at a different level, you get to experience it differently."

Replied katman 1453: "Can we just agree that Al Roker is a national treasure?"

Gus's and the river are familiar points of pride, so Roker's most useful comments, in terms of Memphis boosterism, may have been his enthusiastic endorsement of the redesigned passenger space inside Memphis International Airport.

"I gotta tell ya, this Memphis airport is gorgeous" Roker says, in another Instagram video, in which the camera captures the weather anchor as he walks through the airport terminal. "The artwork on the walls, just very open space, lots of windows. Just really beautiful." The post attracted close to 6,000 likes in 18 hours.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Al Roker shows Memphis love on Instagram: What he posted