It’s time to get to know Maury Povich.
Though he spent 31 years helming the nationally syndicated talk show Maury, the host has remained somewhat of an enigma to his audience — until now.
On Monday, March 31, Povich, 86, launched his first podcast, On Par with Maury Povich, promising in-depth conversations with influential figures in sports, media and pop culture.
“A lot of the guests came on the show because they felt they could relieve their burden,” Povich tells PEOPLE of Maury, which ran from 1991 to 2022. “They felt that they could create a safe space with me and that I was a good person to talk to, and it was almost like I was a member of their family. I didn’t have the opportunity to talk about myself and my feelings and my experiences.”
Maury became a cultural phenomenon due to its sensational topics and dramatic paternity test reveals, but Povich got his start in news journalism. A Washington, D.C. native, he spent years working as a reporter and anchor. In 1986, he became the host of the TV program A Current Affair, which paved the way for celebrity and tabloid stories infiltrating mainstream news.
But over the years, Povich’s career as a broadcaster has gotten lost in the shuffle. Thanks in part to some encouragement from his wife of 41 years — the trailblazing journalist Connie Chung — Povich is ready for people to see him in a new light.
“For the past 30 plus years, everybody has thought of me as a kind of a talk show host who [discusses] certain themes,” he reflects. “That was a great career and I love the storytelling, and I think that I was able to do successfully because of my earlier career as a journalist and a storyteller when it came to news, and rather traditional talk shows that I did.”
“If I was sitting at a desk back anchoring a newscast, I would never unveil myself. And so this is, I think, a perfect medium,” he adds.
He’s not trying to rewrite history, though. “Even my wife writes in her memoir [that] I failed at trying to be Walter Cronkite, so I had to take a different path,” Povich says with a laugh.
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Fittingly, Chung, 78, appears as Povich’s very first guest on the debut episode.
Other dream guests? Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal, the latter of which Povich says was a huge fan of Maury and would bet on the results of the paternity tests among his friends, as well as Cardi B and Nicki Minaj.
“All the rap singers who use me in their lyrics,” Povich jokes.
Despite his prolific career and lasting influence on pop culture and media, Povich remains humble as ever, which is perhaps precisely what makes him a such a compelling storyteller.
“It’s interesting, years and years ago, I was doing a talk show in Washington called Panorama,” Povich reflects. “Tom Shales, who was a Pulitzer Prize winning TV critic for the Washington Post, ended up reviewing the show and he called me a renaissance man. I think that’s what I’ve been really all my career. All 60 plus years of it. I know a little about a lot of things, and that’s why I can talk to people.”
On Par with Maury Povich airs new episodes on Mondays.
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