Journalist Lindsay Czarniak is breaking her silence on the terrifying incident on the set of the Today show last week, when an intruder managed to lunge at her husband, Craig Melvin.
“I’m so grateful that everybody in that situation is OK, of course,” Czarniak, 48, exclusively told Us while promoting her new show, Game Day Murders. “It was wild. But we’re just excited that no one is hurt and that they can move forward now.”
An unidentified stranger managed to breach security on the Today show set on Thursday, July 16, asking for meteorologist Al Roker. When the individual was not able to find Roker, 71, they allegedly threw themselves at Melvin, 47, while calling the host a racial slur.
The individual was arrested and a security guard on the daytime show’s New York City set was fired over the incident.
Czarniak and Melvin met during their time working in D.C. — Czarniak in sports, Melvin in news and politics — and eventually said “I do” in 2011. The couple share son Delano, 12, and daughter Sybil, 9.
“Watching everything that’s happened for him in his career has been just really amazing,” she gushed of her husband. “I don’t know, we both feel so grateful. It’s wild. I will say, I think it’s really helpful that we both are in the business. We talk about that a lot.”
Czarniak joked that, in many ways, she “married my dad.”
“My dad was in the business,” she explained. “My dad traveled a lot for work. But the one thing that Melvin and I are really able to support each other on is, if he knows there’s something that’s going to light me up and is a good opportunity, he’s always my biggest supporter to be like, ‘Go do it.’ I think you take that for granted if you’re not in it.”
Czarniak’s passion for storytelling is on full display in Game Day Murders, a six-part series exploring the intersection of sports and true crime by examining some of the most notorious crimes in sports history, including the murder of NFL player Sean Taylor and and the death of MLB outfielder Dernell Stenson.
“It requires an absolute journalistic integrity to do it,” she said of the series. “My producer Jeff, who I think is just phenomenal, was like, ‘We do this because these families understand that we are telling their story, this is a way to carry on the legacy of a person who is no longer with us.’ That sort of struck me. It still gives me chills. I had never thought about it that way, but I do think that it’s true.”
She added, “One thing I’m really excited about with Game Day Murders is the people that we found that were willing to speak that, in many cases, have not talked before. People that were really on the front lines of what happened, and that takes guts. But my gosh, it adds to the nuance and the truth of it all.”
Game Day Murders premieres Monday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET on ID, with episodes also available to stream on HBO Max.
