Better: How I Let Go of Control, Held On to Hope, and Found Joy in My Darkest Hour by Robach Amy

Author:Robach, Amy [Robach, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553392982
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-28T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Listening to My Heart

After four apprentice years in Charleston, I was lucky enough to get several job offers in late spring of 1999, and one of the most tempting was from KTRK in Phoenix. When I visited, the news directors actually got down on their knees and sang to me in the airport. I knew that if I wanted to work in L.A. one day, that’s where I should go, because it was a feeder market to bigger stations on the West Coast. Tim’s a golfer, so he loved the idea. And I thought, I’ll finally get to anchor, and the weather is amazing!

But as I was about to formally accept the job, my agent—whom I’d signed with a year earlier to help me in my job search—called and said, “I just got some interest from WTTG, Fox 5 in D.C. They want to fly you up tomorrow.”

I wasn’t thrilled. In my mind, D.C. was gritty and grimy, and it certainly didn’t have those sunny Arizona skies. Phoenix was the better position, as the morning and noon anchor. D.C. would be reporting from the morning helicopter and the noon anchor. But this was the local station where Brian Williams had been the weekend anchor, where Al Roker had risen through the ranks, and where Maury Povich had met Connie Chung.

So I flew to D.C., and they rolled out the red carpet. It was the first time anybody had ever sent a black car with a chauffeur to the airport to pick me up, and I was impressed. After the car dropped me off at the station on Wisconsin Avenue, one of the show’s producers picked me up in her convertible and drove me through Georgetown. It was June and I had never been to Washington before. I was blown away by its beauty: the manicured lawns, the lush flowers, the glistening Potomac. We passed the Capitol, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument, and the power of the city washed over me. I immediately thought, I’m going to live here.

I called Tim that night from my hotel room and said, “Don’t kill me, but Phoenix is out. I want to take this job—and I know you don’t believe me now, but you’re going to love this place.”

And, Tim being Tim, he said, “Okay, we’ll figure it out.” That’s him: always agreeable, always easygoing.

I was nervous that I was going to be stuck as the “chopper chick,” but this was a place where local news was national news, and I knew that given half a chance, I could really grow and prove myself.

The Charleston papers carried the story that I was moving on, and before I left I got a call from John, the football coach who had nearly persuaded me to call off my engagement.

“Can we please have lunch?” he asked. “I just want to talk to you.”

I asked Tim first, and his response was, “Fine. I don’t have a problem with it. I trust you.”

At lunch, John told me he had met somebody.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.