Mark Hayes

Mark Hayes co-anchors NBC 5 Today weekday mornings from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. Mark joined the NBC 5 team in May of 2012.

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Prior to moving to North Texas, Mark was at FOX 5 Atlanta as the "Good Day Atlanta" co-host in April 2002.

Mark's on-air career began in Albany, Georgia at WALB-TV. He has also worked at WOKR in Rochester, New York, KMGH-TV in Denver, WBAL in Baltimore, and anchored in Detroit at WXYZ-TV.

The National Press Photographers Association recognized Mark and his colleagues with a first place national award for outstanding coverage in the 1996 riots following a rock concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater just outside of Denver.

Mark’s proudest accomplishment is the nearly ten hours he spent on the air anchoring coverage of the Fulton County courthouse shootings. From the Friday morning he began alerting viewers on the whereabouts of the suspect, right through Saturday afternoon’s surprising and intriguing arrest of Brian Nichols, it was a story he will never forget.

Active in his community, Mark is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. He often travels to schools to talk to kids about a variety of topics including education, self-esteem and drug prevention. He also manages to find time to coach basketball and volunteers for the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Although Mark was born and raised in New York, he still has plenty of southern roots to fall back on. His father, a retired teacher and principal is from Clinton, North Carolina, and his mother, a retired social worker, is from Columbia, South Carolina.

Mark graduated from Howard University in 1989 with a BA in Communications.

In his free time, Mark can be found at the gym. He is a former college football letterman for the Howard University Bison and enjoys all major spectator sports.

Mark also loves testing his taste buds at all kinds of North Texas restaurants, serving anything from hamburgers to Tex-Mex.

Mark’s eldest son, Kenny, is a 2011 graduate of Howard University as a varsity letterman on the football team. Kenny Hayes is now stationed in Norfolk, VA as a member of the US Navy serving on the USS Enterprise. Mark's youngest plays hockey for a New England prep school and aspires to play hockey in college. His wife is a prosecutor in North Fulton County and is a graduate of Howard University and Colorado University Law School.