If you’ve spent any time on the Today show fan pages lately, you’ve probably seen his name pop up. Mark Orchard isn’t a celebrity in the traditional sense. He’s a working journalist who spent two decades behind the camera at the BBC, Al Jazeera and now Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson. But he’s also the answer to a question a lot of people have been typing into Google: who was Savannah Guthrie married to before Michael Feldman?
The two dated for a short window in the mid 2000s and married in December 2005. By 2009 it was over. Guthrie stayed quiet about the split for sixteen years, which only made people more curious once she finally addressed it. That renewed interest picked up again in early 2026 after her mother, Nancy Guthrie, was reported missing from her Arizona home, an event that put Savannah’s entire family history back under the microscope. So here’s what’s actually known about the man at the center of it.
Who Is Mark Orchard?
Mark Orchard is a British broadcast journalist who has spent most of his adult life covering American politics for major international outlets. According to his LinkedIn profile, he studied philosophy at University College London and then spent two years training as a broadcast journalist with ITN before moving into news production full time.
From there he joined the BBC, where he worked as a senior producer across several international bureaus including London, Paris, Johannesburg, Los Angeles and Washington DC. During his decade with the network he covered conflicts, natural disasters and major political events around the world, according to his official bio on the Full Measure website.
Orchard left the BBC for Al Jazeera English in 2006, working as a senior news editor before Al Jazeera launched its American arm in 2013. He became an executive producer on America Tonight, the network’s nightly newsmagazine, a role he held until 2016. Since then, he’s been the senior broadcast producer for Full Measure, the syndicated Sunday politics show hosted by Sharyl Attkisson, where he oversees coverage of federal spending, defense and diplomacy.
One detail that stands out in almost every profile of him: Orchard has personally covered every US presidential election since 1996, making him one of the more experienced political producers still working in American television.
How Mark Orchard Met Savannah Guthrie
Orchard and Guthrie’s paths crossed in 2005 while both were covering Michael Jackson’s child sexual abuse trial in Santa Maria, California. Guthrie was on assignment for Court TV at the time, years before she joined NBC. Orchard was reporting for the BBC.
The courthouse press pool for a trial that big tends to be a small, intense world, reporters camped out for months, trading notes and killing time between hearings. That’s reportedly where the two struck up a relationship. They married in December 2005, only months after meeting.
Why Did Mark Orchard and Savannah Guthrie Divorce?
The marriage didn’t last long. Guthrie filed for divorce in 2009, less than four years after the wedding, and the split coincided almost exactly with her move to NBC, where she would go on to anchor Today alongside Hoda Kotb and later Craig Melvin.
Neither Orchard nor Guthrie has ever detailed the reasons behind the breakup publicly. Guthrie kept the subject almost entirely off limits for sixteen years, even skipping it in her 2024 essay collection Mostly What God Does, where she wrote that some parts of her life were “too personal and too embarrassing” to include.
That changed in July 2025, when Guthrie finally addressed it during an appearance on Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast. Asked about the hardest period of her life, she said, “It was horrible and sad and it broke my heart,” adding that it took her years to recover and that she wasn’t interested in assigning blame.
She’s returned to the subject a couple of times since, including during a January 2026 episode of the Joy Rides podcast, where she described feeling like a failure while going through the divorce and starting her career at NBC at the same time. Some outlets have reported she was 36 at the time of the split, which lines up roughly with the 2009 filing date given her birth year.
Orchard, for his part, has kept his side of the story almost entirely private. He rarely discusses his personal life in interviews, and there’s no public record of him commenting on the marriage or the divorce at any point.
Where Is Mark Orchard Now?
As of mid 2026, Orchard remains the senior broadcast producer for Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, a role he’s held since 2016. The show airs on Sinclair Broadcast Group stations and focuses heavily on investigative political reporting, government spending and defense coverage, the same beat Orchard has worked for most of his career.
He keeps a fairly low profile online. His Instagram bio simply describes him as a “Journalist, television producer, photographer,” and his public posting is limited. He hasn’t remarried publicly, and there’s no confirmed information about his current relationship status.
Guthrie, meanwhile, moved on and married Michael Feldman, a former Democratic political aide, in March 2014 after dating for several years. The couple share two children, daughter Vale, born in 2014, and son Charley, born in 2016. She’s spoken warmly about her current marriage in multiple interviews, often contrasting it with how hard the earlier chapter of her life had been.
Quick Facts Table
| Full name | Mark Orchard |
| Profession | Broadcast journalist and producer |
| Education | Philosophy, University College London |
| Career highlights | ITN, BBC, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America, Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson |
| Married Savannah Guthrie | December 2005 |
| Divorced | 2009 |
| Current role | Senior broadcast producer, Full Measure |
FAQ
Is Mark Orchard still a journalist?
Yes. He currently works as the senior broadcast producer for Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, a position he’s held since 2016.
How long were Mark Orchard and Savannah Guthrie married?
They were married from December 2005 to 2009, a little under four years.
Did Savannah Guthrie ever explain why she and Mark Orchard split?
Not in detail. She’s called the period “horrible and sad” and said it took her years to recover, but she’s said she doesn’t want to get into specifics about who was responsible.
Does Mark Orchard have children?
There’s no public information confirming whether Orchard has children of his own.
Is Mark Orchard on social media?
He has a private Instagram account under the handle @orchamd, where his bio describes him as a journalist, television producer and photographer.
Mark Orchard has built a genuinely solid career on his own terms, covering three decades of American political history from the ground up. The Savannah Guthrie chapter is a small, brief part of a much longer story, and given how private he’s kept his personal life since, it’s probably going to stay that way.
