American journalist, television presenter yim south shore center actress. She has hosted Extra and E! Menounos was born in the Boston suburb of Medford, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents Costas and Litsa Menounos who worked as janitors in a Boston nightclub.

In 1995, Menounos began to compete in beauty pageants. The following year, she won the title of Miss Massachusetts Teen USA, and she competed at Miss Teen USA where she placed in the top 15, receiving an honorary mention, during the preliminary competition. She placed 13th in the preliminaries. Menounos attended Boston’s Emerson College participating there in the organization Emerson Independent Video.

She graduated from Emerson in 2000. During her senior year at Emerson, Menounos worked as a reporter for Channel One News. She left the program in 2005 to focus on her acting career, although she joined rival program Access Hollywood that fall as a correspondent. In 2004, Menounos appeared in an episode of the UPN series One on One as Glenda, an eccentric, self-proclaimed “Fairy Godmother to the Stars”. At the age of 17, Menounos produced In the Land of Merry Misfits, an independent film fairy tale. The 35 mm feature film was produced by Menounos while attending Emerson College with director Keven Undergaro, then head writer for MTV’s Singled Out.