LIer Jill Martin of 'Today' to host spinoff 'Steals & Deals' show

"Today" lifestyle correspondent Jill Martin, a Plainview native, will host a spinoff special of that morning show’s "Steals & Deals" segment Monday at 9 a.m. on the Today All Day channel of the NBC streaming service, Peacock.

Helping her as co-hosts of this combination talk/shopping show are her mom and dad, retired teacher Georgette and retired attorney Martin Dorfman, her brother Jon, an equities trader, and his wife, Hara Tuchman. "I hope even if you don't shop that you'll just escape for two hours and be entertained," Martin, 44, tells Newsday. "I mean, at least my father, brother, sister-in-law and mother are very funny," Martin riffs, "so at least if you don't think I'm funny, you'll think they're hysterical."

"Peacock Presents: Holiday Steals & Deals with Jill Martin," produced by the NBC News Custom Productions Unit, shot last month at Martin's home on the East End — mostly in the backyard "because we weren't allowed to have people in the house" due to the pandemic, she says. "They turned the backyard into a winter wonderland" with 25 fir trees, six birches, a fireplace, "six huge boxes of snow blankets and six gallons of flocking." A remote-operated camera also shot bits with Martin and family inside the home.

Guests include Tracy Morgan talking about the Garden of Dreams charitable foundation, Al Roker praising first responders, Kathie Lee Gifford reminiscing on meeting her late husband Frank Gifford, and Olivia Culpo and her sisters discussing their fashion line. The wares include more than 50 gift items at what producers call a steep discount, with 70% of them from small businesses — among them, the Plainview wireless-accessory retailer Trend Tech.

Martin, who as well is a sports sideline reporter for MSG Network and a host for the shopping channel QVC, "was born in Plainview, and my parents are still in the same home I grew up in," she says. She attended the Judy Jacobs-Parkway Elementary School in that town, then Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School where, the 1994 graduate recalls, she played clarinet and was president of the marching band.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with a communications degree, Martin worked as an assistant on the daytime tabloid talk show "The Maury Povich Show." She later spent five years as a sports anchor-reporter for WFOR, the CBS station in Miami. She followed this with a job as entertainment reporter for the South Florida independent station WAMI before returning to New York and, eventually, her current gigs. Somewhere along her peripatetic route, she was a Hamptons reporter for News 12 Long Island.

Her media presence was first felt long before that. Two days after she was born, she and her mother were photographed for the May 3, 1976, Newsday "Part II" cover, appearing alongside an insert photo of a fetal-monitoring device.

Martin — who took her father’s first name as her last name professionally — formerly lived in a 2-bedroom apartment near Gramercy Park in Manhattan, but was in her Long Island house when the pandemic lockdown began this spring and now lives there full-time.

"I saved my entire life to buy a house," she recalls. "And I bought this house on my 40th birthday. I didn't have the money to decorate it, and I couldn't find anything I liked that I could afford. So I went to QVC and said, 'I want to ... [host a shopping show featuring] a home line — luxurious products at affordable prices.' And they said yes. So I decorated with all my items from QVC."

And so all these months, where she's continued to produce TV segments from her home studio, "I'm sitting in the product. So when we go live, it's very easy set to set up!"