Steve Kroft officially signed off from “60 Minutes” Sunday evening after announcing his intentions Friday to retire from the program where he has worked for 30 years.
In a brief message at the end of the show, Kroft said it was a “difficult decision” but he still had other things he wanted to do and noted wryly that he wasn’t “getting any younger.”
“As my good friend and colleague, Morley Safer advised me a few days before he passed away, ‘Don’t stay too long,’” Kroft said. “There are still some things I’d like to do that I haven’t done. I’m not getting any younger. I want to leave while I still have all of my marbles, the energy to enjoy life and the curiosity to pursue some different things.”
Safer, who spent 46 years on the show, died just one week after retiring from the broadcast in 2016.
“I’ve done nearly 500 stories for this broadcast and that has taken up most of the past 30 years of my life,” Kroft continued. “It’s been a tremendously rewarding experience and I want to thank you.”
Kroft first joined “60 Minutes” in 1989 servingside along legendary past correspondents including Mike Wallace, Safer, Harry Reasoner and Ed Bradley. He has spent more than 50 years as a journalist with 40 of those years at CBS News.
“Steve Kroft’s reporting for ’60 Minutes’ has been as important as any correspondent’s in the history of this broadcast,” “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens said in a statement Friday. “Steve, with his sharp eye for detail, rich writing and demanding journalism, has set the bar at ’60 Minutes’ for three decades.”
Though the show will be losing Kroft, it will be gaining John Dickerson, who moved off his gig co-hosting “CBS This Morning” to become a permanent correspondent for the program. The move was part of a sweeping talent shakeup at the network.