New ‘Today’ show anchor’s Connecticut home is all about family

A few months before Craig Melvin married Lindsay Czarniak, the couple began casing Connecticut for a suitable place to live.

Melvin had just landed a new job at MSNBC in midtown Manhattan that summer of 2011, and Czarniak got a job at ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut. The couple met when they were both working as anchors at the local NBC affiliate WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. “Kind of the only thing we cared about was that our commutes were similar in each other’s in length, and that we were near a train station,” said Melvin, 45.

“We knew nothing about Connecticut,” Melvin continued. “I had never been to Connecticut. We looked at a map, and there were some towns right in the middle of where we need to live: Fairfield, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport.”

Westport won.

The small-town feel grew on them even as their family grew larger to include two children, and their careers placed them on much bigger stages. Melvin recently replaced Hoda Kotb as the anchor of the first and second hours of NBC’s “Today.”

When the pandemic hit, the idea of a bit more space became irresistible, and in 2021, a shingle-style six-bedroom Colonial came on the market. It was big, it was bright and it had a backyard pool that Melvin and Czarniak wanted for their children, a son, Delano, now 10, and their daughter, Sybil, now 8. The beach was a short walk away. Done.

The Melvin-Czarniak family room is where a person can become better informed about the Mesozoic Era. Delano loves dinosaurs, particularly the T-Rex, and there’s a model of one on display. “He has dozens of books on the subject,” Melvin said. “You give him some specs and he’ll tell you which dinosaur it is.”

Next to the T-Rex miniature is another artifact of a bygone period: a turntable; the family likes to hear music on vinyl. Hanging on the wall in clear cases are some of their favorite LPs.

“My wife is a huge Don Henley fan, and she loves Miranda Lambert. My daughter loves Taylor Swift, but she’s moved on to Ariana Grande,” said Melvin whose own taste runs to classic R&B. “‘Thriller’ is one of the greatest albums of all time.”

Others can sit on the blue couch that’s within very easy listening distance; Melvin heads, perhaps somewhat protectively, to the chair that once belonged to his paternal grandmother.

“When I was a little boy I was, shall we say, a bit boisterous,” he said. “And when we went to her house for Sunday dinner, my grandmother was very reluctant for me to sit in the chair or be near the chair because she thought I would break it.”

After his grandmother’s death in 1995, Melvin’s parents asked if he wanted a keepsake. Yes, he did: the chair, pink upholstery and all. Some years later, Melvin bought his first house in Columbia, South Carolina, where he was working in local news. The chair, newly restored and no longer pink, moved in with him and has since gone with him to every new home.

“It’s funny,” Melvin said. “Before I started my new gig at NBC, my family came to town for the weekend. And that Saturday morning, I was sitting in my grandmother’s chair talking to my mother about my new adventure.”

When Melvin and Czarniak got married, one of the first pieces of furniture they bought was a rectangular ash-gray wood table from the home furnishing shop Lillian August. “We had our first Thanksgiving on the table,” recalled Melvin. “But before we had our first child, Lindsay worried that the table might not be safe for kids. She thought there might be splinters, and that the corners were too sharp.”

This explains how the table became Melvin’s desk. Now, he said, “It will be my desk forever.”

Because parenthood has made Melvin sentimental — “and the older I get, the more sentimental I have become”— he has an increasing appreciation for objects with history. A case in point is the buffet that’s right across the room from his desk. It belonged to his maternal great-grandmother.

A year or so ago, Melvin began making candles on this advice of his therapist who had spoken favorably of a “hands-on” hobby. Now Melvin has another issue that may require therapeutic intervention: He has become obsessed. His homemade efforts burn in his office, his dressing room and in co-anchor Savannah Guthrie’s dressing room. He’ll be attending his first trade show in a few weeks.

Czarniak’s gift to her husband this past Christmas was a space in the garage wholly reserved for his molds, wax, wicks, thermometers and essential oils. Melvin is very big on amber, oak moss, lavender, dragon fruit and, a special tribute to his mother Betty Jo, a lemon pound cake-scented candle.

“At first I thought it was really nice of Lindsay to do this,” Melvin said laughingly. “But then I realized she just wanted me to stop making them in the kitchen.”

Over the past 14 years, Melvin and Czarniak have deepened their relationship with Westport, which they initially viewed as just somewhere convenient to live.

“We’ve become unofficial ambassadors of the town,” Melvin said.

He coaches his son’s basketball team, while Czarniak, now a reporter for Fox Sports, is a mainstay of the PTA and a veteran class mom.

In 2021, the National Father’s Day Committee, a nonprofit, named Melvin a “Father of the Year” honoree. The trophy that proves it is on a high shelf in the family room. “Now and then, one of my kids gives me grief and I tell them, ‘Hey, I’m one of the best fathers in America,’” Melvin said. “They laugh.”

At home, the lower level of the house has something for everyone.

When the family moved in, they built out the bar in the basement, hung a large screen TV, fixed up the exercise room and installed an old-fashioned restaurant booth wrapped in green leather. The black and white tile underfoot is a nod to the checkered flags used in auto-racing, one of Czarniak’s particular passions.

“This is our favorite space,” Melvin said. “When I’m not traveling and Lindsay’s not traveling, this is where we all have dinner on Sunday. A booth forces you to be close.”