As told to Jeannette Cooperman
Photograph by Mark Gilliland
It was 1975, and Anne Keefe was staying over in St. Louis on her way to an interview in Kansas City for a TV job. The phone rang at 6:03 a.m. “Bob Hyland,” said a gruff voice belonging to the well-known KMOX general manager. “I’ll send a limo for you. I want to talk.” The limo came stocked with orange juice, a Danish and a Thermos of coffee. When she reached KMOX, Keefe told Hyland that she hadn’t done radio in years. “TV’s here and gone. Radio’s what counts,” Hyland replied. “Can you go on tonight?” She did, and he hired her to be the station’s first woman interviewer.
I did celebrity interviews for 30 years, and people would call in to ask questions. Sometime in the mid-’80s, things started to reverse: People would call to insult the author.
I said to myself, “I can’t sit here and have this person attacked.” So I would interview the person, say thank you and hang up and then open up the lines.
We got into a phase where we enjoyed humiliating people. That’s when I began to think I didn’t want to do this anymore.
Shock shows are cheap: You just need one jock, and he talks about the size of his sexual organ, and that seems to amuse the public, for some unknown reason.
The world of celebrity—American Idol shows, reality shows ... and no talent.
To admire others and be admired ourselves—that’s all we want.
We asked what was most important to the greatest number of people. Today, news is anything a celebrity does.
What the hell went on in our brains before we had cellphones?
When I realize that we could feed and house everybody in the world with what we spend on killing—that angers me.
Was I ever shy? No, I was frightened. Apprehensive. Every day you are thinking, “Am I smart enough?”
I’ve spent my life figuring out how to compensate for my inadequacies by pulling other people in. It makes you look wonderful.
People want their children to learn a skill, but that’s not what college is about. It’s about learning how, when adversity strikes, to turn it around.
If somebody is smart and well-read and talks about it, we feel either intimidated or competitive.
We do not respect education. We suspect education.
My grandfather, an old Irishman, used to say not “Why are you angry?” or “I’m sorry that it’s upsetting,” but “What are you going to do about it?”
The hostess will say, “Now, no talk about politics or religion.” Well, what’s left?
I dieted all my life, because you’ve gotta be thin to be on television. It was an era of young, blond and thin girls and gray-haired men, and I hated every minute of it.
I’ve been healthy, which is kind of sad for my doctor, because I smoke, I drink martinis, I eat bonbons and I don’t walk—except to get more ice, or outside to smoke a cigarette.
The only thing sad about getting old is, you say to yourself, “All this knowledge is going to be buried?”
When President Reagan took us into Central America, people would call and say, “Anne, they could come overland,” and I’d say, “What are they going to do? Dig up my azaleas?”
Abortion—we argued that goddamned issue for 30 years, and we are going to argue it for another 30. Each cause builds a following that makes a career of that cause, and they can’t let it go.
I don’t know what’s happening to my rights, to my taxes, to the war, because radio news is all showbiz now. That’s what pays.
In this phase of life, mostly what you do is observe, and the world’s a constant source of amusement: “My God, there they go again.”
