Katharine Bear Tur was born on October 26, 1983, in Los Angeles, California, to helicopter journalists Zoey Tur and Marika Gerrard — two of LA’s pioneering broadcast reporters. She attended the University of California, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 2005. She launched her career at KTLA in Los Angeles, moving through WPIX, News12 Brooklyn, and The Weather Channel, before joining WNBC-TV in New York in 2009.

Tur joined NBC News nationally in 2012 as a foreign correspondent based in London. She became a household name in 2016 as NBC and MSNBC’s sole embedded reporter for the Trump presidential campaign, logging nearly 4,000 live television appearances over 18 months and across more than 40 states. In 2021, she began anchoring Katy Tur Reports on MSNBC (now MS Now). 

Off-screen, Tur is married to CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil. The couple has two children together, and Tur is stepmother to Dokoupil’s two children from his first marriage. The family resides in Brooklyn, New York.