Mary Hart

About

Mary Hart (born Mary Johanna Harum; November 8, 1950) is an American television personality. She was the host (1982–2011) of the syndicated gossip and entertainment round-up television program Entertainment Tonight. She was Miss South Dakota 1970.

Mary Harum was born in Madison, South Dakota. She was raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Denmark. She speaks English, Danish and Swedish fluently.
She graduated from Augustana Academy in 1968 and from Augustana College in Sioux Falls in 1972.

She was crowned Miss South Dakota 1970 and subsequently was a semi-finalist in the Miss America 1971 pageant.
While teaching English at Washington High School for two years, she also produced and anchored her own talk show on then-NBC affiliate KSFY-TV in Sioux Falls.
Hart began her full-time television career in 1975 at WMT-TV (currently KGAN) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, then moving to KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1976, she went to KTVY (now KFOR-TV) in Oklahoma City, where, with Danny Williams, she co-hosted the show Dannysday. She also was a sales representative for a school yearbook company. Determined to leave journalism behind, she moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood…