i met gayle king long before she was nationally famous. i was probably 14, called up the WFSB TV newsroom and it was her who answered.. i point blank asked for a tour of channel 3 and to watch a newscast, telling her i wanted to go into broadcasting later in life and wanted to see how they did things. she was about as gracious and kind as could be, met alterzi and denise d'ascenzo briefly.
when i was about 12, i made the same type of call to WVIT 30, got weekend anchor ann baldwin on the phone.. asked her the same thing.. spent an entire afternoon there, met chris wragge briefly, hes now cbs famous.... and got the full tour and treated very well by the rest of the staff (not that i wasnt at channel 3, but i remember this one more because ann and I are still somewhat in contact through social media nearly 30 years later)
And when i was .. again about the same age, i made the same type of call to Channel 22 in Springfield, MA.. got a tour and got to see like a foot away from the weather guy while he was on air, hes in Dallas now
I've met a handful of local celebrities a few places where I've lived. I met John Anderson when he was at KOTV in Tulsa and again when he was at ESPN when he did an interview at the radio station where I was working. He was a good guy both times.
I occasionally ran into Kris Budden, who is now with ESPN, when she was in college. Didn’t really interact much with her, though.
I had a couple classes with Lauren Lemanczyk in college but didn’t know her well. I believe she's at KARE 11 in Minneapolis now, but she was briefly seen nationally when she worked in Boston during the Boston Marathon bombing.
John Criswell from KDFW in Dallas was as nice and approachable as they came. If I remember correctly, he was married to a deaf woman and was heavily involved in charities and organizations to help the disabled.
Bryan Busby, who had occasionally filled in on Good Morning America in the 80’s, worked in St. Louis and now works as chief meteorologist for KMBC in Kansas City. Ran into him at the bar at the now defunct 75th Street Brewery in Kansas City one night. He was a riot! That was among the hardest I've ever laughed in my life. It was like a free standup comedy session.
Jilda Unruh, who went on to work at several stations in Miami, Boston, and Minneapolis, presented at the career fair at my junior high when I was in sixth grade. She was an investigative reporter in those larger market stations and was often called a “pitbull in pumps.” I found her totally unlikeable. Made the presentation all about her, didn’t leave time for questions, and didn’t make herself accessible after the session. Refused to even sign an autograph for a classmate. My junior high/middle school had a career fair every year, and she was the only person who ever did anything like that. She died suddenly a few years ago. I don’t want to say I said, “Yeeeessss!”, when I read the news, but I didn’t feel sad to read it.
BTW - I dug out my old high school yearbooks and found this picture of Amber Valletta from my sophomore year and her junior year. She had already appeared on the cover of Vogue and had been around the world by the time it was taken. This is from Fall 1990.
