British-American Ted Koppel is a broadcast journalist who has an estimated net worth of $15 million. He was born Edward James Martin Koppel on February 8, 1940 in Nelson, Lancashire, England. Ted is the only child of German-Jewish parents who fled Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In 1953, Koppel was thirteen when the family migrated to the United States. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Syracuse University and a Master of Arts Degree in Mass Communications Research and Political Science from Stanford University. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Duke University in 1987.

He began his professional career as a teacher. He was then hired to work at WMCA Radio in New York. In 1963, he began to work on Flair Reports for ABC Radio and he became the youngest correspondent ever hired by ABC. Between the 60s and the 70s, he worked as a war correspondent and U.S. State Department correspondent. He began hosting Nightline in 1980. It was a job that he did for 25 years until he stepped down in 2005. After that, he has served as special correspondent for a number of programs including Rock Center with Brian Williams and for BBC News. He has also written columns for the New York Times and appeared on a number of radio programs on National Public Radio where he is currently a senior news analyst. He was also the Managing Editor for three years for the Discovery Channel until he resigned in 2008.