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Maria Sansone Profile |
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Birth Date: February 26, 1981
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Birth Place: Erie, Pennsylvania, USA
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Birth Name: Maria Sansone
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Height: 5'1"
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Biography |
Maria Sansone was born February 26, 1981, in Erie,
Pennsylvania. A natural-born entertainer, she was discovered
at the age of 11 when she took part in a mini slam-dunk
contest at an Erie Wave basketball game. “I guess I was kind
of a ham and made everybody laugh,” she recalls. “So one of
the local news anchors there was covering the game and he
interviewed me because he thought I was so funny… He thought
I was pretty well-spoken for an 11-year-old.” The segment
proved to be so popular that Maria was offered an official
position at the network. “The next thing you know, I had my
own spot on the news three times a week where I was
interviewing kids and interviewing some famous sports
celebrities also,” she says. Those celebrities included
megastars like Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan, Buffalo
Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill
Cowher, and Dodgers skipper Tommy Lasorda.
It didn’t take long for Maria’s exploits to gain the
attention of producers around the country and, within a
year, she appeared on Good Morning America and The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno, and she was the subject of a feature
article in The Wall Street Journal.
When Maria wasjust 12, her growing fame prompted ABC to send
her to a wide variety of sporting and entertainment events,
and she was soon appearing on national broadcasts of ABC's
Little League World Series, the Professional Bowling Tour,
Wide World of Sports for Kids, NBA Inside Stuff and the U.S.
Figure Skating Championships. In fact, Maria proved so adept
at each new assignment that she was asked to host Gladiators
2000, a children’s version of the popular head-to-head
combat series American Gladiators.
Maria hosted the short-lived show from 1994 to 1995 before
deciding to step out of the limelight for a few years to
return to the business of being a regular kid. It proved to
be a solid decision for this energetic tomboy, and she
starred on her high school basketball team before going off
to Syracuse University to study communications. "It just got
to be too much,” she says. “I wanted to be a normal kid. Not
that it was a bad thing going to California and New York
City and all of that, but as a kid, that's really hard to
deal with. I look back on that stuff now and think, 'Is that
really me?'”
Maria became a star again at Syracuse when she was selected
to cohost Live with Regis and Kelly during the show’s “co-ed
week” while Kelly Ripa was on maternity leave. "As soon as I
stepped out onto the stage and was holding [Regis’] hand, I
could not stop smiling,” she recalls. “I was smiling, I was
waving like I owned the place. From that point on, it was
great. It went by fast."
After graduating from Syracuse in 2003, Maria moved to
Manhattan where she worked as a VJ for MTV’s college
network, MTVU. “I thought, 'Well? I love MTV and I really
dig college, so let's go for it,'” she recalls. “My first
gig was down in Barbados for a spring break special. So how
can you say no to that?” Maria also continued to freelance
in her spare time for CBS Sports, CSTV and NESN.
Maria took her career in yet another new direction in the
spring of 2006 when she landed a hosting gig on The 9, a
brand new internet webcast on Yahoo!. The daily program
began on July 10, 2006, and was since hailed as one of the
world’s 50 Coolest Websites by Time Magazine. |
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