The morning she walked in, I was smoothing out my notes for the 7 AM segment on rising gas prices. A Tuesday in mid-October. The Chicago wind had already stripped half the leaves off the ginkgo trees outside the WGN studios, and the smell of burnt coffee from the green room drifted down the hall.
Then the door swung open and there she was—Natalie Voss, my new co-anchor. A former TikTok meteorologist from Tampa, all of 26, with a grip on her tote bag like she was about to storm a castle.
“You must be Dave,” she said, not a question.
I had been Dave for fourteen years behind this desk, and suddenly the name felt like a placeholder.
Our producer, Mark, had told me they were “freshening up the format.” I’d pictured a new graphics package, maybe a plant. Not a human hurricane in a coral blazer who fist-bumped the floor manager before the title sequence rolled.
The teleprompter kicked in. I launched into the lead story—some city council dustup—and she sat there radiating. Not smiling, exactly. Just… lit. When her turn came to read the weather, she didn’t read it. She was in it. She pointed at the map and said, “You’re gonna want to grab that jacket by noon, Chicago, because those lake-effect chills are *sneaky*.” The camera loved her so hard I could feel my own pixels dimming.
Viewers noticed. By 7:12, Mark was already in my earpiece. “Dave, lay back a little. Let her drive.”
Lay back. On my own show. The show I’d dragged from a 1.2 share to a 2.8 by grinding through sewage plant tours and suburban fender-bender pressers. I let her drive.
She did a segment on air fryers. I crossed my arms. That was my move—lean back, let the wristwatch catch the light. Now I looked like the grumpy uncle at Thanksgiving.
At the break, she leaned over. “You okay? You seemed a little… tight on the sewer bond item.”
“It’s a municipal revenue strategy.”
“Sure, but people’s eyes glaze. You gotta give them an enemy. The leaky pipe *is* the villain.” She mimed a tiny explosion with her fingers. “Boom. Fixed.” Then she grabbed a mint from the bowl on the desk and popped it, completely unbothered.
I wanted to hate her. Genuinely. That would have made things simple.
But the crew kept laughing at her jokes. Even Gus, the cameraman who hadn’t changed facial expression since the Bears’ 2006 Super Bowl loss, snorted once. When she tripped over a cable and caught herself, she just said, “That one’s for the bloopers,” and turned it into a dance move. The disaster didn’t stick to her.
I went home that night to my condo in Edgewater and stared at a frozen lasagna in the microwave. My phone buzzed. My sister, Lisa, had sent a screenshot of the station’s Facebook. “New girl is ELECTRIC,” the top comment read. My name appeared in exactly zero comments. The lasagna beeped. I didn’t take it out.
The next morning, the real test arrived. We had a live segment booked with the mayor’s press secretary—tough, no-nonsense woman named Valerie Hood who’d filleted me on air three years ago over a pension question. I’d briefed Natalie on the history. “Let me take point on this one,” I said.
She didn’t argue.
Valerie sat down, power suit, a smile that meant the opposite. I asked my first question, and the secretary dissected it with a scalpel. I fumbled for a follow-up, but then Natalie spoke.
“Valerie, I’ve gotta ask—if we’re pinching pennies on after-school programs, but we found four million to repave the road in front of the developer’s new complex, can you help us connect those dots?”
Dead air for a beat. Valerie’s smile flickered. Natalie wasn’t aggressive. She just waited, pen hovering, head tilted like a golden retriever that had found a steak.
Valerie dodged. Natalie circled back. Not quoting stats from a prep sheet—she’d actually read the budget appendix. I could see her highlighted notes on a crumpled printout tucked under her mug. She’d done the work. On her second day.
After the segment, Valerie shook my hand with the usual politician grip and air-kissed Natalie, whispering something I didn’t catch. Mark’s voice came through the earpiece, crackling with joy. “That’s the shot. That’s the clip of the week.” He wasn’t talking to me.
A few hours later, I was in the parking garage off Clark Street, feeding the ticket machine my stub, when footsteps echoed behind me.
“Dave.”
Natalie, coat over her arm, bag slung across her chest.
“You did good today,” I said. The words came out like chalk.
“I screwed up,” she said.
I turned.
“I should’ve teed it up for you. You know her, you’ve got the relationship. I just—saw an opening and jumped.” She scrunched her nose. “I do that. Mark keeps saying I have ‘boundary issues.’”
I didn’t know what to say. The wind rattled the grating above us.
“Look,” she went on, “when I got this gig, my first thought was, ‘I’m gonna be on the air with Dave Halleck.’ Mom watched you every morning after Dad passed. You were, like, the reliable guy. Still are.”
The ticket machine spit out my receipt. I left it in the slot.
“I’m not asking to be co-captain,” she said. “Just don’t shut the door. I’m way better when someone’s got my back.”
She put out her fist. No joke—an actual fist bump. My hand was halfway up before I knew it.
We knocked knuckles. The sound bounced off the concrete.
Next morning, we opened the show. Same ginkgo trees, same burnt coffee. But when the red light blinked on, I said, “Welcome to *Chicago Sunrise*. I’m Dave, and this is Natalie, who’s apparently memorized the entire city budget and wants us all to own thicker jackets.”
She shot me a look—amused, half-surprised—and then laughed, a real one that bubbled up before she could squash it. “Guilty,” she said. “But also, there’s a pothole on Ashland that’s eaten two Priuses, so let’s get to that.”
I leaned back. This time my arms stayed on the armrests, loose. The teleprompter rolled, and I didn’t count how many seconds I had versus her. I just watched the way she lit up when she talked about the pothole like it was a monster under somebody’s bed.
On the third day, I bought mints. The same kind she had. I left the bowl on her side of the desk.
