Daly attended Santa Monica High School and was a member of the school’s golf team before graduating in 1991. He attended Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and dropped out to pursue a pro golf career. He is of Irish descent and has worked with Guinness on local “Proposition 3-17” to make Saint Patrick’s Day an official holiday. Daly served as an intern to Jimmy Kimmel in radio. He began his radio career at College of the Desert and as an intern at the former KCMJ FM (now KKUU) under the name “Kid Carson”.

In March 2000, Tara Reid met Daly on the set of Total Request Live, and they began dating. They shared an apartment in New York City and Daly proposed on October 29. In June 2001, Reid and Daly broke off their engagement.

Daly hosted MTV’S TRL from 1998 to 2003. TRL was born out of two shows, “Total Request” and “MTV Live” both hosted by Daly. Daly’s role as host of the popular live program included introducing the top 10 videos of the day and interviewing celebrity guests. In 2002, Last Call with Carson Daly debuted. The show was shot on the same set as Saturday Night Live until 2005 when it moved to Los Angeles. Beginning in 2003-2004, Daly began hosting a New Year’s Eve special for NBC, New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly.

In 2011, Daly began hosting and executive-producing NBC’s reality music competition The Voice. Daly’s duties as host include watching blind auditions alongside contestant’s family members. As a producer of The Voice, Daly has won four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Reality-Competition Program, first in 2013 and again from 2015, 2016, and 2017. When social media correspondent Christina Millian departed the show, Daly became the sole host.

In September 2013, Daly became the orange room anchor (social media reporter) on the Today show and also serves as a fill-in anchor for Willie Geist and the show’s weekend edition (Weekend Today).

Daly became engaged to Siri Pinter, a food blogger, in 2013. Her father is actor Mark Pinter. The couple married on December 23, 2015, in a small ceremony. They have four children: a son, Jackson, born in March 2009, and daughters Etta, born in September 2012, London, born August 20, 2014, and Goldie, born March 26, 2020.