Melissa Stark (born November 11, 1973 in Baltimore, Maryland), was an American television personality with NBC who used to anchor with MSNBC. She joined in 2005. Prior to joining NBC, she was best known for her three-year stint as a sideline reporter for Monday Night Football, which she left in order to start a family. She has also worked as a reporter for fellow Disney entity ESPN. In 2005, Stark participated as a reporter for NBC's New Year's Eve coverage, hosted by Carson Daly. In 2006, she served as the sideline reporter during NBC's speedskating coverage at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. She also anchored MSNBC Live. Melissa Stark is the daughter of Walter Stark, a world renowned eye surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. Stark has a degree in Foreign Affairs and Spanish from the University of Virginia. While in college, Stark was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority [1]. In 2001 there was an incident in which Stark was detained in Mexico after a security guard, not knowing she worked for ABC covering an NFL game, refused her, Al Michaels and Dan Fouts entry into the stadium where the game was being played. The detention lasted a while before the matter was resolved and the charges dropped. Stark admits to being quite embarrassed that she couldn't communicate with Mexican police since Spanish was one of her majors. [2] Her husband, Michael Lilley, is an employee at Goldman Sachs. They have a son born in 2003. Melisa Stark left MSNBC in September 2006. She resides in Rumson, New Jersey.[1]
