Maria Menounos (, ; born June 8, 1978) is an American journalist, television presenter and actress. She has hosted Extra and E! News; she was a TV correspondent for Today, Access Hollywood, and co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens, Greece. She also co-created and is currently CEO of online podcast series network AfterBuzz TV. She is currently signed to WWE where she has served as an ambassador since 2013. She hosts the podcast Conversations with Maria Menounos. Early life Menounos was born in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents Costas and Litsa Menounos who worked as janitors in a Boston nightclub. She has a younger brother named Peter. Maria Menounos attended the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church in Somerville, Massachusetts. She also attended Medford High School in Medford. In 1995, Menounos began to compete in beauty pageants. The following year, she won the title of Miss Massachusetts Teen USA, and she competed at Miss Teen USA where she placed in the top 15, receiving an honorary mention, during the preliminary competition. She placed 13th in the preliminaries. She competed for the title of Miss Massachusetts USA 2000 and was the first runner-up. Menounos attended Boston's Emerson College participating there in the organization Emerson Independent Video. She graduated from Emerson in 2000. Career Film, television, and radio During her senior year at Emerson, Menounos worked as a reporter for Channel One News. For her 10-minute segments, she traveled to El Salvador to report on the January 2001 and February 2001 earthquakes, interviewed NATO aircrew members aboard an E-3 AWACS plane during the military alliance's Operation Eagle Assist, and interviewed President George W. Bush. Entertainment Tonight hired Menounos as a correspondent in 2002; she reported on movies, music, and fashion. She left the program in 2005 to focus on her acting career, although she joined rival program Access Hollywood that fall as a correspondent. She went on to co-host a few episodes of the Today show in the late summer and fall of 2006 as well as in April 2007. In 2003, she appeared on the November 30 episode of Punk'd as one of many celebrities caught in the awkward and embarrassing "Red Carpet Interviews". In 2004, Menounos appeared in an episode of the UPN series One on One as Glenda, an eccentric, self-proclaimed "Fairy Godmother to the Stars". In the summer of