Mathai became the ‘first Indian on American television’ to cover 6 Olympic Games in Tokyo, London, Vancouver, Turin, Athens and Salt Lake City
Our Bureau
San Francisco, CA
Raj Mathai, the 12-time Emmy award winner, was honored by the American India Foundation at a gala in San Francisco. Mathai anchors the nightly news and is among one of the most well-known journalists of the Bay Area.
Kerala-born Mathai moved with his family to Palo Alto when he was 7 years old. After attending Los Altos High School, he graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in journalism and political science. 51-year-old Mathai is married to Sonia Ahuja Mathai and they are blessed with 2 children.
Mathai began his journalism career in the early 1990s as a sports reporter in Fresno, California. In 1998, he joined the NBC affiliate station in San Francisco in 1998 as sports director and became the primary news anchor in 2011. Not just sporting events, Mathai covered some of the Bay Area’s most significant news stories, including the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Oakland Hills firestorm, and the dot-com boom and eventual bust.
Mathai became the ‘first Indian on American television’ to cover 6 Olympic Games in Tokyo, London, Vancouver, Turin, Athens and Salt Lake City. In his tenure, he has interviewed everyone from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to Vice President Kamala Harris. He unveiled many stories and covered major events, including the 2019 Gilroy mass shooting, the 2017 Inauguration of Donald Trump, the 2017 Las Vegas massacre, and the 2016 San Bernardino shootings. He led KNTV’s coverage of the 2013 Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport. He has interviewed a host of prominent personalities, including Colin Powell, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom.
