Diane Larson and Lee Conklin have co-anchored the nightly news in Toledo for so long that they pre-date Fifth Third Field. They were pulling up chairs together to broadcast at WTVG-TV, Channel 13, a few years before 9/11.
They’ve become recognizable figures in this town and branched out with interviews of presidents, popes, hurricane victims, and Oscar winners. Stories connected to northwest Ohio have taken them both as far away as China.
They are Emmy Award-winning local journalism institutions with national reporting chops, and one very special claim: They are the longest-running nightly news anchor duo in Ohio, according to research by WTVG-13 news director Michael Baldwin, who contacted sources from Ohio's eight TV markets to affirm that claim.
What’s been most special about doing the news together for so long?
“I mean, it’s a privilege,” Larson said. “We never underestimate the duty and the privilege that people have trusted us all this time. And we work hard to be worthy of that trust. But at the same time, it’s just been a delight to work with Lee.
“I love him to pieces. I think he’s an incredibly talented journalist. He’s a really nice person and he’s funny, and we just have a nice chemistry. It works well. I think we’re like the pesky older sister and the sweet younger brother.”
Conklin nodded while both laughed, adding, “Brother and sister. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. And there is trust in one another that if something goes awry, the other person’s got your back. And that happens almost daily.”
Their relationship began in 1991, when Conklin was hired as the station’s weekend weatherman. Larson had already been an anchor at the station since 1984. When the station was looking for a new co-anchor, Larson asked the news director, “Why can’t I work with Lee? I really like Lee. He’s so great.”
And, so, they became a long-running team.
Conklin and Larson began doing the 6 p.m. broadcasts together in September, 1999, and added the signature 11 p.m. show in October, 2000, when she urged a news director to elevate him to that co-anchor spot.
Enduring with distinction is no easy accomplishment. However, during a recent hourlong interview with The Blade at the station’s studio on Dorr Street, they offered glimpses into how they’ve done it.
None was more striking than when Larson, 62, leaned forward and said: “The best part of my day is always sitting on the set with Lee — always the best part of my day. It’s exciting. It’s live. It’s the moment when you say, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ ”
Conklin, who turned 61 on Saturday, added, “And [the news is] not just something to read to you.”
Making their script seem personal to viewers is perhaps the key to their success.
That there-for-you mindset is what comes through in what is the No. 1-rated evening news show in Toledo according to the latest Comscore household ratings in October. WTVG had a 15.6 rating with an average audience of 52,524 for each newscast.
WTOL-TV, Channel 11, had a 10.3 rating with an average audience of 34,814.
“Diane and Lee have committed a lot of their own personal passion for this community,” said Brad Moses, general manager for WTVG. “Those two have been working hard for this community for so long.”
Larson thinks of their longevity as “kind of miraculous.”
“It’s kind of magic,” she continued. “In an industry that shoos out people, for a station to be firmly committed to us for all these years through all kinds of changes.”
Larson said the station’s “had eight different ownership changes, nine general managers, and at least 13 news directors” — but they’ve endured. “Every one of them has supported us 100 percent.”
So have the viewers.
“It’s life-affirming and career-affirming every day,” said Larson, the second woman inducted in the Ohio Associated Press Broadcasters Hall of Fame. “In such a diverse media world today, where everyone’s watching on three screens — phone, iPad, computers — they still come to us and trust us. They still know us and like us.”
Conklin added, “It’s still a privilege and nice to know when we line up at the polls on election day, people come up to us, and it’s like you’re their friends. You’re just an acquaintance, but you’re ‘Lee’ doing a story for them.”
Larson graduated from GlenOak High School in Canton, Ohio, before getting a broadcast journalism degree at Bowling Green. She started her career at WNWO-TV, Channel 24, and said she aspired to do the news in Cleveland. “And it just didn’t work out,” she said. “Then, it was like, ‘I can have a family here. Why wouldn’t I like to stay here?’ And now I’ve been here over 40-some years.”
She has a daughter, Drew Driskell, 28. Larson’s been divorced for 12 years but cherishes the fact that both parents “walked her down the aisle” at a September wedding. Larson says she's now "happily in a committed relationship with an amazing man."
Conklin, from the Detroit suburb of St. Clair Shores, and wife Lisa have four children — Courtney Wente, 34; Kelsey Sigrist, 33; Jake Conklin, 29, and Michael Conklin, 25 — and one grandchild. He met his wife of 37 years at a community college before graduating from the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts in Southfield, Mich.
He worked at stations in Logansport and Plymouth in Indiana before joining WABJ-FM in Adrian, and then came to WSPD-AM in 1988.
Conklin was a baseball standout at South Lake High, and his idol was Tigers Hall of Fame announcer Ernie Harwell. He listened to him spin tales of the games on a transistor radio nestled under his pillow as a kid.
“Our former mayor was doing a political show called Carty [Finkbeiner] and Company,” said Conklin. “He knew what a Tiger fan I was, and asked if I wanted to help him interview Ernie. So, Ernie drove down here [to the TV studio] and it’s the only time — and we’ve had senators and future presidents come through these halls — that the station put out chairs with us while we talked to him.
“So, the man I grew up listening to growing up, I got to speak with, and he couldn’t have been more gracious. He talked to you like you were the best guy who ever came around. Just a sweet, sweet man.”
Meanwhile Larson had watched Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, and Diane Sawyer, and wanted to do what they did.
“It was Barbara Walters for me,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of women when I was starting out.”
Larson ended up meeting Walters and Pauley while doing station promotions in New York City.
She was assigned to cover the 1999 Oscars because Sylvania’s Scott B. Smith was nominated for a writing award after adapting his novel, A Simple Plan, for a movie by the same name. He didn’t win, but Larson considered that experience the highlight of her career.
“I’m a movie freak,” Larson said, “and I got to go and it was fantastic. Great! I was on the red carpet interviewing stars with ABC and Entertainment Tonight.”
What was her favorite interview?
“All of them: Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Costner, Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lopez …
“I mean, Billy Bob Thornton, Helen Hunt, Drew Barrymore. I screamed at her, ‘My daughter’s name is Drew!’ So, she actually stops to talk with me. And I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to leave the red carpet after doing some lead stuff and I didn’t. It was my most favorite thing.”
Larson did a one-on-one interview with President Barack Obama in Mansfield during the 2012 election campaign, and Conklin got a lengthy one-on-one with President Donald Trump in January, 2020. Conklin has covered U.S. visits by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. And he saw “home state hero John Glenn” go up in a space shuttle and covered Toledoans helping with recoveries after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Conklin has come far since his 1991 job interview at WTVG with general manager David Zamichow.
“He said, ‘Come back with a different suit,’ ” recalled Conklin, laughing about it now with Larson, also managing editor at the station. “And when he hired me, he said, ‘This might work for two weeks or two months — we’ll see what happens.’ ”
Thirty-three years later, Conklin’s still here, and he also co-anchors the 5:30 p.m. news with Kristian Brown.
“I thought about going other places and talked to people in other towns,” Conklin said. “But all of our kids had been born here and I thought, ‘Why screw this up?’ I’ve got a great thing going with Diane and everybody here.”
Both nodded and excused themselves from the interview. They had a show to do, and couldn’t wait to share the news.
Contact Steve Kornacki at skornacki@theblade.com or on Twitter @SKORNACKI.
First Published December 3, 2022, 4:00 p.m.
