STRAIGHTtalk: With Vicky Crystal
Brian Cabell sits down with Vicky Crystal, TV6’s relentlessly upbeat morning personality, to discover the real person: who never really had a father, who’s concerned about her looks, who’s struggled with financial problems, who’d like to find a mate. But deep down, she’s a bright, shining spirit.
Vicky Crystal in the tv6 UP newsroom. (photo by Ron Caspi)
BC: Vicky Crystal…That’s not your real name, is it?
VC: No, back when I started in radio, there was a lady working at the station by the name of Betty and Betty was training me in. And she heard my real last name was Prewitt, and she said “That name will never fly in Finn country.” So I told her I had no back-up, what do you want me to do? So she went on the air and she said, “Coming up next, we’ve got Vicky Crystal!” And so I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down so I could remember what my new last name was.
BC: Your childhood…Where’d you grow up?
VC: I grew up in central Wisconsin. We moved there from New Jersey when I was in second grade, so I was a cheesehead until I moved up here to the Upper Peninsula, the better part of the world.
BC: A happy childhood?
VC. Uhhhh…It was moderate. After my parents divorced, things changed a lot for us. It was very quiet. I wouldn’t call it happy, would’t call it sad. I grew up on a farm so it was a little isolated. Were there any catastrophes after my parents got divorced? No. It was just…normal.
BC: I remember you once saying that you were estranged from your father.
VC: Yes, when my parents split up, he went back home to Louisiana and my mom wanted to started afresh, and that’s how we ended up in Wisconsin. He didn’t know where we were, at least I don’t think he did. So we were cut off from him. But you know, I’ve always kept rose-colored glasses on—my family calls me the Pollyanna of the family—so I never really tried to think about it. I sort of detached myself from it. But of course, other kids had two parents and my mother was a working mom, so I was raised by siblings a lot, and I just thought, “Well, that’s the way it is.”
BC: But did your father eventually come back into your life?
VC: Yes, I met him again after thirty plus years, and that was very different. Actually he passed away a few years ago but, you know, we were okay. Because I never grew up with him, I never felt like I was a daddy’s girl. I met him and he was just this old guy who had a lot of interesting stories to tell, and he looked like me, so he must have been my Dad! (laughs).
BC: What kind of jobs did you have prior to getting into broadcasting?
VC: Before I got into radio I had one job that I failed miserably at. I was doing Park Lane jewelry sales, and for some reason I thought that would be cool. I do like jewelry! But let’s just say, selling jewelry to dairy country isn’t all that easy and I think I made maybe $200 from that, and then shortly after that, that’s when the radio job at WJPD came up.
Vicky Crystal has been a part of the TV6 newsroom for the past 14 years. (photo by Ron Caspi)
BC: Then you got into TV. How’d that happen?
VC: You know, I will always have a lot of respect for radio. It was my first love but there was an ownership change at WJPD, they said they were going to make changes in my job which is part of what a new company does. Well, I wasn’t on board with those changes. And then shortly afterwards, Karen Rhodes, who was the production manager at TV6, called and said, “Vicky, I’ve always wanted to get you on the news, and now we have a Morning News opening, and I think you’d be the perfect fit.”
BC: What do you most like about being on live TV?
VC: I think what I really like is, in radio there was a touch of isolation–it’s you and the microphone and maybe one or two people. In TV, you work with a group of people. I like that. I’ve got other people I can interact with. Over the years, I’ve really come to trust them and now I know they do their job well. That means I can relax and just broadcast and not have to worry about juggling eighteen balls at one time. I get to have a lot of fun.
BC: Do you have a single most memorable day broadcasting the news on TV?
VC: There was one time—it was the Fourth of July weekend of 2006—and there was an auto accident that happened. I sent my producer out and he got video of it, and we did the show knowing it was not a good accident. Probably a fatal. Then after the show, I was doing one of the Today show cut-ins, and just beforehand when I was ready to go live, they came out and handed me the press release. And the name of the victim was a kid that my daughter had graduated high school with just the year before. He lived about two or three houses aways from us. I had about twenty seconds to process his name and the fact that he was gone, and then deliver it on the air without emotion. That was tough.
BC: The Virginia TV shootings have really hit home, haven’t they?
VC: (Sighs) Yes, we send people out every day. I can’t imagine how those two young kids—they’re kids to me—felt just going out and doing an everyday story. They were just doing their job. No one in any work place should ever have to be afraid to go to work. It hurts us in this business on a level that’s hard to describe.
BC: Let’s lighten it up a bit. You worked at at the checkout counter at Target for a few years while you were also doing the Morning News. Why?
VC: I’m a bad money manager. (Laughs) I was a single mom and I was living on credit cards and that seems so enchanting as long as you can keep up, but when the credit cards start controlling your life, you have a decision to make. You can either declare bankruptcy or you can do something about it. I’m extremely stubborn, and the thought of declaring bankruptcy to get out of a hole that I put myself in…I couldn’t do it. So I looked for a second a job but the idea was to get a job behind the scenes. Guess what? They saw me coming through the doors at Target, and they said “Vicky, we’ve got a job for you!” (Laughs)
BC: You’ve taken some criticism over the years for your appearance…You’re not the classic female TV star. You’ve handled that remarkably gracefully. How have you been able to do that?
VC: You know, I walked into television knowing that I don’t look like the typical TV person. It’s really tough when you know you’ve got the skills to do something but you don’t have the expected look. So you just have to decide, are you going to move forward with it, or are you just going to stop and do something else? So I tell myself that if I get up and I get dressed and I try to look the best i can every day, and if there’s one person out there who watches me on the TV and says “I wasn’t feeling good about myself but Vicky is on the air,” then I’ve done my job on a different level. If I can inspire anybody to say, “You know what? Maybe I’m not perfect but that’s okay,” then that’s a good thing.
BC: You seem very upbeat every morning. Is that the real you, or do you sometimes suffer from bouts of depression or gloom?
VC: There are days when people pick on you for something like my looks, and yeah, that’s not right. It affects me. When you get that negative email or that negative post on Facebook or a letter, you just want to curl up in a ball and cry. And I have! But I can’t wallow in pity forever. And I tell myself, “Well maybe that person just had a bad day and they decided to take it out on me.”
BC: Quick impressions: What’s Steve Asplund like?
VC: Workaholic. I respect and admire him for it because he has such a passion for news and the Upper Peninsula.
BC: Greg Trick.
VC: You know, Greg Trick could be sitting at his desk and a fire would break out, and Greg would calmly look at you and say, “Hey, there’s a fire over there. We should go do something about that.” Nothing ruffles the man. But at the same time, when you get him in the mood, his jokes can crack you up.
BC: Karl Bohnak.
VC: He’s one of those people who wants so much snow, it sometimes makes me a little ill. But at the same time, he has such a passion for what he does. He absolutely loves what he does. I admire that.
BC: Mike Ludlum.
VC: Mike is a hoot. He has an incredible exuberance. He loves getting out there, covering sports and showing people why, even though you hear a lot of bad things about sports sometimes, he brings that love back.
Vicky Crystal TV6 UP morning newscaster. (photo by Ron Caspi)
BC: What would you do if for some reason your TV career ended tomorrow? Any other career options?
VC: I’ve thought about it. This job is what it is, and for women especially, with the emphasis on looks, it’s different. A couple of other careers, actually, have tugged at my heart. I’ve thought about jobs in disaster relief. I’d like to be a positive force for those people. And the other career I’ve felt really drawn to is something in conservation or nature. I’ve come to really love the world around me. I can see going out and working with the Park Service, and show people why this planet is just amazing.
BC: Biggest regrets in your life. Do you have any?
VC: My biggest regret is, you know, I’m still single, and I do think about that sometimes. I don’t let it drag me down. Part of my job has been working really odd shifts, and if you’re not involved with someone before the job starts, it’s really hard to find and maintain a relationship. Still, I have that hope that someday down the line, I’ll find someone. I don’t mind going places by myself but sometimes it gets a little lonely.
BC: What’s the best way to spend a day?
VC: When I’m off, I get up late which for me is like 5 am (laughs), get the coffee pot going, have a couple of cups of coffee, get caught up on any Facebook posts that my friends might have, and then I just love to grab the dog and just go out water falling. I love waterfalls! And then when I come home, I might sit down with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and I could sit—I kid you not—all day long and watch the bees pollinate flowers.
BC: When you retire someday, do you think you’ll stay here or go somewhere else?
VC: I don’t know. I’m keeping my options open. Ten years ago, if you had asked me would I be doing a lot of traveling, I would have laughed. But now I have really learned to love to travel. I would like to see more of the world, but I think there’s something in the Upper Peninsula that touches me in a way that I’ve yet find anywhere else. This is home to me. I can see that when the travel time is done, and it’s time to just sit and watch the bees, I can’t imagine any other place besides the U.P. where I’d want to do that.
BC: I understand you’re religious. What do you suppose happens to us after we die?
VC: I like to think that there’s a loving God who sees beyond what our beliefs are and he’s just there to take me home.
BC: Thank you, Vicky.
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