TODAY show weatherman and broadcasting legend Al Roker was presented with a key to New York City on Tuesday morning by Mayor Eric Adams in honor of his 70th birthday.
Adams awarded the key to Roker outside on Rockefeller Plaza during Tuesday morning's broadcast.
“I never imagined a kid from Queens would be receiving a Key to the City of New York,” Roker said in the surprise moment. “This is really special. I love this city and grew up here with my dad working as a New York City bus driver in Brooklyn. I’m so very blessed and lucky.”
Roker was born in Queens and went to school in the city, and has now spent nearly 30 years as a face of New York across the nation on the TODAY show.
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"A child of Queens, Al worked his way up the ranks to become the defining weatherman of his generation, leaping from local broadcast news and into living rooms across the country," Adams said in a statement. "We have spent everything from Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades to Olympics to generation defining breaking news together with Al. Today, we celebrate an iconic New Yorker who taught us ‘what’s happening in our neck of the woods.’ I’m honored to deliver the Key to the City to ‘America’s weatherman’ — Al Roker.”