Kristen Welker To Co-Anchor NBC’s ‘Weekend Today’

Ted Johnson

NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker will co-host Weekend Today along with Peter Alexander.

She will succeed Sheinelle Jones, who announced last month that she will step away from the NBC show to devote more time to her family. Jones will continue to co-host the third hour of Today during the week.

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Welker already has been a fill-in anchor on Weekend Today. She was one of the moderators of the November Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC, and covered the 2016 election as one of the NBC News “road warriors” who traveled the country during the election cycle.

Before joining NBC News, Welker was a reporter and weekend anchor at WLNE-TV in Providence, RI, and an anchor and reporter at KRCR-TV in Redding, CA.

Jones co-anchored Weekend Today for five years but said that she wanted time to spend with her three young children on Saturdays.

“Since I’m so busy on the weekdays, I thought, ‘You know what, I should probably see those three children that I have at home,'” Jones said on the show last month. “They’re 7-year-old twins and a 10-year-old — Kayin, Clara and Uche — every time I look up, I feel like they look like they’re a little bit older. So I’m going to be home with them on Saturday mornings.”

Welker’s first appearance as permanent co-anchor will be this Saturday.

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