Former KMOX anchor Carol Daniel reflects on the joys and challenges of her career

Carol Daniel needed to jump start her career.

Yes, that Carol Daniel, the Carol Daniel who went on to become the beloved news anchor, talk show host, interviewer and reporter at KMOX in St. Louis for 28 years before retiring this spring.

But years earlier, she was hungry for that first full-time talk show position after working a variety of jobs in and outside of the broadcast world: spinning records, reading obituaries on the radio, covering news, selling cable subscriptions, working in retail and more.

She found that jump start 115 miles south of St. Louis, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where she spent three years as a radio and TV talk show host. Cape Girardeau was a ``relatively conservative place,” she said, noting that she was liberal on some things and conservative on others.

“I was blessed as a Black woman, to go into Rush Limbaugh’s hometown and represent a different point of view and did it in such a way that it was endearing to people,” Daniel said. “I know I opened minds. I know I was a revelation for some people.

“ It was such a wonderful experience. I am a small town girl anyway so I totally understood covering school boards, the city council in a small town.”

Townspeople didn’t forget Daniel. “We had her first and we’ve missed her for 28 years,” someone posted on Facebook when she announced her retirement in St. Louis.

“ To know you left that kind of legacy that people still remember you is such a blessing,” Daniel said.

Daniel discussed her legacy, the challenges and joys of her 40-year broadcast career and influences on her life during an interview with the BND as her May 25 retirement date approached.

Getting started down the broadcast path

Daniel describes herself as someone who grew up with ``deep faith, family oriented, hard working. ” These are values that served her well during her career.

She was born at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, one of Isiah and Rosella Keeler’s five children. Her father was a drill sergeant at the Army post, where she spent most of her young life, except when the family was temporarily stationed in Germany.

Her parents, married for 67 years, are Daniel’s heroes.

She said her personality is more like her father’s than her mother’s.

“My mother is an introvert. My father, the drill sergeant… this is his voice,” she said. “We used to say he could sell a bald man a comb.”

“... He is still very talkative. He is such a comedian and a great, great storyteller. I get it all from my dad,” Daniel said.

Daniel graduated from Waynesville Senior High School in 1980. She went to both the University of Missouri and Lincoln University, a historically Black land-grant university in Jefferson City, where she graduated in 1985 with a degree in communications.

She hadn’t always been interested in being a broadcaster. Her first career choice was business.

“I went to college as a business major. I wanted to work in corporate America. I wanted to be a woman with great suits and an incredible briefcase, working in a big city and going into a tall glass tower,” Daniel said in her zesty voice.

But at Lincoln University, she decided to take a different path and get into broadcasting.

“Initially, I wanted to be a jazz d.j. I had fallen in love with jazz. Then, I determined there weren’t that many jazz stations in the country in 1985,” she said.

By then, Daniel had started writing for the school newspaper at Lincoln, doing interviews and writing public service announcements.

“That’s how it really started. They had a campus newspaper and a radio station. They had a jazz station. I worked at the radio station as a class,” Daniel said.

Eventually, Daniel went to work at a country music station in Jefferson City, where she read the weather, among other tasks. On the weekends, she played the top 40 hits.

“The program itself came on an album. I played the first part of the album, lifted the needle, read the weather, read some headlines and then flipped the album and played the other part of the album,” Daniel said, chuckling.

Daniel worked at the same time for Missourinet, a network that provides news and other content to radio stations across the state. Daniel said Bob Priddy, who was the news director at the network for over 40 years, was a big influence on her.

“I gave him a cassette tape that I had recorded of myself. He wrote me, typed out on one of those old fashioned typewriters, a critique, a review of my newscast. I still have that letter he wrote to me in 1984,” Daniel said.

“He told me I had great delivery. He said I needed to make sure I was comfortable reading and not sound like I was reading,” she said. “ It was the first time anyone had said anything to me about my voice in a truly positive way. It came from a professional.

“He was the first person who said to me I had what it took to be a radio journalist,” Daniel recalled fondly.

Daniel works for Kansas City stations, cable company

After graduating from Lincoln University, Daniel moved to Kansas City, where she had jobs at two stations, including selling advertising at one of them.

“Then I had the bright idea to go work for a cable company because the cable company had a community station,” she said. “ I thought I would go sell cable and work my way over to the on-air side and have my own show. Crazy, because I was able to volunteer and have a show, but I never got a paid job.”

But it did, indeed, turn out to be a good idea to work for the cable company because Daniel met so many people.

“It was a place where I learned the inner workings of non-profits, talked to activists, learned things I never knew about growing up on a military base. It was great experience,” Daniel said.

She worked multiple jobs, including selling cable service door to door for three months.

“ It was a horrible, horrible job. It was scary,” Daniel said.

“My mother wanted me to call her everyday when I got home,” she recalled. “ You would go into people’s homes to sell the cable and you would go in with the installer to install the cable. Walking into communities, I could hear dogs barking, and chains rattling. It was the worst three months.”

Reading obituaries, covering the Gulf War

Daniel left Kansas City and went to work in her hometown of Waynesville, near Fort Leonard Wood, at another country music station, KJPW. It had a two-person staff, including a news team of one: Carol Daniel.

Daniel worked there at the time of Operation Desert Storm, the Gulf War, which started in August 1990. She was well equipped to cover the war from the Fort Leonard Wood angle.

‘’I knew so many people. I was able to get stories and interviews with service men and women that other people couldn’t get” she said. “ I was the only game in town. There was a newspaper, but the closest television station was in Springfield, Missouri, 90 minutes away.

“ I was a one-man band, covering incredible stories and learning how the war affected people back home.”

Part of her job as a reporter at the station was reading local obituaries live on the air at noon. “And, my mother said to me one time ‘Carol I just love the way you read the obituaries.’ I said to her that is probably the greatest compliment I will ever receive.”

After working 18 months at the Waynesville station, someone let her know there was a job opening in Cape Girardeau that she should apply for.

“I had no idea where Cape Girardeau was. Some women said to me there were no men in Cape Girardeau. Why would you go there? I said I am not going there for a man, I am going there for a job.”

``This was my first chance to have a show and do talk radio. I always wanted to do a radio and television talk show,” Daniel said.

So she applied.

Daniel laughed while relating this story:

“The funny part is that’s where I met my husband. I wasn’t going there for a man. I was going there to jump start my career and that’s where I met my husband. And, he is from the Virgin Islands.”

She was in Cape Girardeau for about three years.

It was a rewarding experience for Daniel, who worked hard to prepare for her shows. She had to do a lot of research, spending hours at the library reading “old editorials, magazines, people’s books.”

“The internet was coming into being and people could know more than you as a talk show host,” Daniel said.

She was now working in conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s hometown. Her talent and her success in Cape Girardeau laid the groundwork for what came next: Joining the staff of the large- market radio station, KMOX.

Moving on to KMOX to serve the St. Louis region

Daniel started at KMOX in 1995 as a news anchor and reporter before taking on the role of an afternoon co-host, where she spent much of her career. For four-plus years, Carol also was the co-host of the TV talk show “Great Day St. Louis,” which she helped launch at KMOV-TV.

Over the course of her career in St. Louis, she has been involved in community events and organizations around the region, as an emcee, featured speaker, host and board member. She’s an active member of her church, New Life in Christ Interdenominational Church in O’Fallon.

By its nature, the career Daniel chose requires one to cover tragedy of all kinds, and deal with negativity, anger, natural disasters and more. So it may seem like an oxymoron to ask her whether her job was fun.

“You get to know people. I am such a people person. So, it has been a lot fun,” Daniel said. “ But it is a greater responsibility. “

You have to get it right under extremely tight time constraints and deadlines, she explained.

Then there are the challenges of working in talk radio, which she called an “ argumentative media,” with some people listening for information and others for ``argument’s sake.”

“Even greater now, people are willing to disagree in a rude fashion,” Daniel said. “ It seems like a lost art to be able to disagree and try to find greater understanding.”

“...There has always been that element in talk radio of the disagreeable nature of mankind. And, that has made it not fun. “

Daniel also had to face even darker ugliness as a Black female journalist, especially earlier in her career.

“There has been the element of sexism and racism where people send me nasty letters, unsigned, fake addresses and then my share of phone calls,” Daniel said. “ I haven’t got any of those in a very long time.

“Early in my career I would get a lot of phone calls from people who were willing to be profane and say prejudicial and racist things to me or about my family. That was always present. Everybody gets negative calls - ‘You fool! You’re an idiot! ‘

“Every reporter gets that, but every reporter doesn’t get ‘You B’ or ‘You whore,’ or ‘You the N word. Your mother’s a gorilla,’” she continued. “ Somebody said to me once ‘If I saw you in a car, I would assume you were a welfare mother.’

“I don’t know if that is a result of bad education, segregation or what. It is a result of racism, that’s for sure.”

How did she stay motivated in the face of negativity and the other challenges during her career?

“Well, from a practical standpoint, I have bills to pay,” she said with a loud laugh.

“From a spiritual standpoint, God brought me here,” she said. “From a career and destiny standpoint, I deserve this great job and I belong. That was something I did not always feel.”

At many of her assignments, she explained, she was “often the only Black person in the room, the youngest person in the room, or the only woman in the room.

“For many, many years, my own insecurities, I carried them around and was insecure in the room,” she said.

But she worked hard to fight that insecurity because she knew that so many people depended on her work and her presence, that it made a difference.

“Women are listening. Everybody is listening. That’s the other reason to get up. I know they say don’t worry about it, nobody is looking. But when you are doing radio and television and when people are reading your byline, people are looking. They are listening and reading.

“ I have listeners, viewers and readers. They matter. I know my presence has always made a difference. It has rattled some nerves, but it made a bigger difference.

“For a woman to see a woman in a male-dominated field be successful, be strong, be powerful, be well-spoken, outspoken, expressive, compassionate, insightful, express her wisdom and her faith all in one conversation. I know it’s been impactful. People have told me it’s been impactful.”

The importance of family

For Daniel, family is paramount. She often talked about family values on the radio.

She has been married to Patrick Daniel since July 2, 1994, and they have two children, Patrick Daniel Jr. and Marcus Isiah Daniel.

For Carol Daniel, it was important that her children be able to know the power and importance of what she did for a living, but it was challenging because the demands of her job meant she often wasn’t at home. So sometimes she was able to take them along to big events.

“Not only was I reporting and anchoring, I was in the community helping raise money and serving on boards. I was gone a lot. I wanted them to be with me when they could. They’ve been on many stages with me and in many audiences with me.”

She told the story about bringing her family to a dinner event hosted by 100 Black Men of America. Her youngest son was fascinated when the family got to stay in a hotel when he was about 11 years old.

“He met Maxine Clark, the founder of Build A Bear. And, he had a Spiderman bear that he got when he was about 8 years old. He got to meet the woman who created the company,” she said. “ I could see the wheels turning. I could see his eyes bright. It was such a moment. It was just such a moment. They know each other to this day. He is 23.

“It was a multi-purpose thing. They could physically be with me. It was a formal dinner. They got to meet people, and talk to adults. They could see their mother operate.”

Daniel’s commitment to her family is one of the reasons why she ``retired’’ from KMOX so early, at the age of 61. She’s had cancer twice and has beat it twice. And Daniel and her brother, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Al Keeler Sr., are helping to care for their aging parents, who now live near the Daniel family’s O’Fallon home.

So really, she hasn’t retired. She has lots to do. Caring for her parents, staying active in the church and community, writing another book and more will be keeping her busy. She also will continue motivational speaking, which she has been doing for years.

Having wonderful children and a supportive husband and being part of a great church, pastored by Bishop Geoffrey V. Dudley Sr., along with her professional success in the broadcast world, have helped her navigate the good times and the challenges in her career. It’s all helped her become the confident, strong woman she is today, ready for a new chapter in life.

“Dealing with difficult people and difficult situations, on the other side you are stronger and wiser. So, I have become a more courageous person. I have become a more confident woman. I am a wiser individual.”