He was born Edward James Martin Koppel on February 8, 1940 in Nelson, Lancashire, England. Ted is the only child of German-Jewish parents who fled Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. In 1953, Koppel was thirteen when the family migrated to the United States. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Syracuse University and a Master of Arts Degree in Mass Communications Research and Political Science from Stanford University. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Duke University in 1987.