Wallace's stepfather was CBS News President Bill Leonard, who secured him a gig when he was 17 as Walter Cronkite's assistant at the 1964 Republican National Convention.
After attending Harvard, Wallace worked at the Boston Globe before moving into broadcast at New York's WNBC-TV in 1975 and serving as NBC's Chief White House correspondent from 1982-1989, during which he covered the 1980, 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
Wallace became a household name in his time moderating "NBC Nightly News" from 1982-1984 and 1986-1987 and "Meet the Press" from 1987-1988.
After he left NBC, Wallace spent 14 years at ABC, where he was the senior correspondent for "Primetime Thursday" and a substitute host for "Nightline."