Television trailblazer Sue Wylie dies after vehicle collision in Lexington

Longtime Lexington television news anchor and radio talk show host Sue Wylie, 90, died after a car crash in Lexington Tuesday.

Wylie was involved in a collision at the intersection of Alumni Drive and Chinoe Road, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office said in a news release. She was pronounced dead in the Emergency Department at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital at 7:47 p.m.

Five vehicles were involved in the collision, which was reported at 4:55 p.m., said Lt. Thomasena Grider of the Lexington Police Department. She said three people were taken to a local hospital after the crash, and police later learned one had died.

Wylie’s career in broadcasting began in Cincinnati in the 1950s and spanned six decades. Before joining WLEX in 1968, she worked in Columbus, Ohio, and Miami, where she was among the first women covering hard news in that television market.

She created the “Your Government” show for LEX 18 in the early 1970s and went on to host several governors on the show, as well as political figures including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Wylie retired from a 30-year career at LEX 18 in 1998 but continued to host a talk radio show on WVLK-590 AM until 2013.

She was a graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and did voices and dramatics for a Rod Serling show called “The Storm” in the 1950s, according to a brief biography on the website of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

She was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1999.

When she retired from WVLK ten years ago, Wylie told a Herald-Leader reporter that she had made the decision because she “did not want to be the Larry King of Lexington. I didn’t want anyone to ever say, ‘Is she still here?’”

She said she was going to miss the callers.

“Unlike most other talk shows in town, I try to make it almost completely caller-driven,” she said. “Other shows will take them, but I base my show on caller opinion. That’s what I like. “Some of them are surly. Some of them are silly. But they’re all interesting, and I really love them.”

Wylie talked politics with Jack Pattie and took calls from listeners on WVLK Monday morning. Pattie introduced her as “the first lady of broadcasting in Lexington” and said on the show that she had “done it again”: the phone lines were jammed with callers.

Wylie was memorialized as a local news icon by many who shared remembrances of her on social media Tuesday night.