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Joe Scarborough’s Wife Mika Brezinski’s Net Worth: How the ‘Morning Joe’ Cohost Makes Her Money
Since 2007, Mika Brzezinski has been seen alongside her now husband Joe Scarborough on the MSNBC morning news talk show Morning Joe. But the talk show host and political commentator has many more credits on her résumé.
In Touch takes a look at her net worth, including how she earns her money and her tips on asking for a raise in a male-dominated world.
What Is Mika Brezinski’s Net Worth?
Mika has an estimated net worth of $20 million with an annual salary of $8 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. She was previously a correspondent at CBS News, where she was a principal “Ground Zero” reporter during the morning of the September 11 terrorist attacks. She has also published numerous books.
Mika Brezinski’s Pay Disparity With Husband Joe Scarborough
On a 2011 episode of Morning Joe, Mika reportedly revealed that she was making 14 times less money than her Morning Joe cohost and now husband, whom she married in November 2018.
“I had found out I was the lowest paid at the table and sometimes by far,” she claimed at the time, according to The Daily Mail. “I didn’t think I should be making more than any of you guys, but I thought I should have been a lot closer.”
While she said that she understood there would be some differences between their salaries, considering that Joe has his name on the show and she was coming in from previously being unemployed, she alleged that “these were vast.”
She added, “While he was coming from prime time, and he was worth a lot more, he’s also the creator of the show, I was certainly not worth 14 less than him.”
In her 2011 book Knowing Your Value, she elaborated on the pay gap. “Despite my professional experience, the fifteen-hour workdays, and a successful new show that I had helped build, MSNBC was still refusing to pay me what I was worth,” she wrote. “After child care, on-air wardrobe, makeup, travel, and the other ridiculous expenses that women in this business end up taking on, the job was actually costing me more than I was being paid.”
Thankfully, she revealed on Morning Joe, “We fixed it.”
How Mika Brezinski Asked for More Money
According to a 2011 interview with The Huffington Post, Mika asked MSNBC’s then president Phil Griffin for a raise multiple times but failed at each attempt.
She revealed that one day, Joe had money from a ratings bonus deposited into her bank account because he didn’t want her to walk away from the show. However, she said, “I was sickened by it.” Her past had influenced her to write her book Knowing Your Value, and eventually MSNBC got on board.
“Ultimately, MSNBC showed me the money,” she wrote in her book, per Today.com. “I got a significant raise, but not in the way I would ever have anticipated. Mine truly was an unconventional path, and I advise you not to walk it yourself. I’ll tell you more about my experience later in the book. To its credit, MSNBC not only made good, but it has taken up the cause. After I got this book contract I went to our boss, Phil Griffin — one of the stars in this book and the man who passed on giving me a raise until I was able to effectively communicate my value. I said to him, ‘Listen, I’ve got a book deal. I’m going to write about knowing my value, and I’m going to write about the mistakes I’ve made. And I want to write about mistakes I’ve made with you.’ He thought about it for less than a second and said, ‘Absolutely.'”
Mika Brezinski’s Advice for Asking for a Raise
During a previous interview, Mika talked more about how people, particularly women, should ask for a raise in the workplace.
“I’ll tell you what not to do and then what I finally did,” she said. “We apologize our way into the room. Don’t apologize. Stop saying it in general, and it’s something I keep catching myself on, even after writing now two books about it.” (She is also author of the 2015 book Grow Your Value: Living and Working to Your Full Potential.)
Mika added, “We tend to worry about everyone being comfortable in the room. That is no place in a negotiation. They are supposed to feel uncomfortable, and that is very unnatural for us. We feel like it’s our job to make everybody feel really good, and it’s not. Our job is to get the raise or the money or our value. And you can’t have both. We want it all. We want everyone to love us, we want everyone to feel comfortable. We want no bad feelings when we leave the room, and we also want the money. They don’t compute. Men are able to say, ‘You know what. I don’t really care about you liking me right now. Right now, I want this deal because Joe Blow over there makes a lot of money over at that company. I’m going to go over there and beat him and make even more than him, or I’m going to stay here, and you’re going to pay me more — however guys do it. They’re very aggressive, they’re very focused, and they’re very confident. We tend to say, ‘Well, you know, I would hope that I could do my best.’ We undervalue ourselves. We’re trying to make everybody like us. It’s a real issue for us.”
Mika Brezinski Is the Author of Multiple Books
In 2010, Mika published a memoir titled All Things at Once. The following year, she released Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth, and its “sequel” Grow Your Value: Living and Working to Your Full Potential hit shelves in 2015. Her book Obsessed: America’s Food Addiction and My Own was published in 2012; Earn It!: Know Your Value and Grow Your Career, in Your 20s and Beyond was published in 2019; and in 2020 the audible audiobook Comeback Careers: Rethink, Refresh, Reinvent Your Success – At 40, 50, and Beyond (coauthored and also narrated with Ginny Brzezinski) was released.
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