<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3InrC0_0wAzZfWo00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3InrC0_0wAzZfWo00" width="800" height="600" ></figure>Nickles and co-anchor Ron Bird have done the morning show on 2News for the past 27 years. Photo courtesy of Mary Nickles If Mary Nickles wasn’t so good at telling television viewers what’s going on in their world every morning, she might be writing a cookbook. Fortunately for Salt Lake City and much of the Intermountain West, the popular and award-winning news anchor for KUTV 2News has no plans to shift gears.Mary and her husband Kent never thought they’d stay in Utah, when she accepted a job at KUTV in April 1991. The native of Renton, Washington, was working at a station in Yakima when she decided to test the waters in a larger market.“I had a clause in my contract, so I could leave for another job if it was in a Top 50 market,” she said. “We crossed off the Top 50 cities we didn’t want to go to, and Salt Lake was one of them.” She came to Utah for the interview, got the offer, and signed a two-year contract.“It was for a weekend anchor position with three days reporting, but we figured after two years, we’d be out of here,” she said. “We weren’t Mormon and we didn’t ski, so why would we stay here?”What they discovered was the beauty of Utah and the wonderful people.“Channel 2 has been fantastic. I keep signing new contracts, and Ron [Bird] and I have been anchoring the morning show together for 27 years. I absolutely love the people here. I talk to a lot of people who come here on vacation and they want to stay. Kent and I are two of them.”Mary is the eighth of nine children, raised by her telephone man dad, and state legislator mom. “We were resourceful, team players, and we learned to work hard. The joke was that we were all born on a team. And we’re all kinda tall and athletic; five of us got college athletic scholarships.”That included hers to Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, where she played volleyball. While in high school, she was involved in sports, choir, student government, and also wrote for the school newspaper. When she got to college, there weren’t many journalism classes, but one set her up with a local radio station doing a blues show and news breaks from midnight to 3 in the morning. “It’s where I learned about radio broadcasting and I had a whole lot of record albums! I wanted to learn more and I love writing, so I majored in English with a speech minor at Lewis-Clark.”She later moved home and interned at a TV station in Seattle – unpaid but “a great learning experience. It was a blast. I was setting up lights and microphones, but would pick the brains of the reporters, watching what they did and how they wrote and crafted stories. I saw that you have to weave the story with the video that you have, the facts you research, and the sound you get from the interviews.” And she was hooked on a journalism career in TV or radio or newspapers. One of the production team at the station helped her put together an audition tape which she sent out to several stations in the Northwest. Her first job in Yakima paid $800 a month for 40-plus hours a week. She said it averaged out to about $3.73 an hour, and she was what is known now as a one-man band. “I had to shoot my own video, write and edit the stories, then do the reports. Eventually I produced and anchored the evening news, but after four years of that, I realized I like reporting more than anchoring, and started the job search that brought me to Utah.”What she loves about 2News is the feeling of teamwork, the idea that “we help each other get better and the whole team wins. Maybe it’s from coming from a big family – we all did chores and errands and never undercut each other. That’s the way it is here at Channel 2. The morning reporters are often not very experienced, and we want them to strengthen, and help our whole team get stronger. We don’t bark at people in the mornings – we tell people stories. You’re just waking up as viewers, so we don’t want to yell at you – and we use verbs.”All journalists find stories that have connections to their lives, but nothing has been more personal to Mary than her journey through breast cancer.“It was Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, and Utah women are the second worst in the nation for getting mammograms,” she said. “So the station had me get a screening for a story, to show viewers how easy it was. After the interview, looking at my X-ray, the doctor told me I needed to come back for a second look.” The ultrasound and biopsy found a cancerous tumor.“I’ve always been healthy, active, take care of myself, don’t smoke and eat well, but I still got it.”She made her journey through treatments into a series of stories that included losing hair and wig shopping. She had doctors explain what radiation is doing to her, why chemotherapy was needed, and how someone you know might be going through the same thing.“I hate being a part of the story, but in this case, it made the story more real and powerful. Explaining that chemo is like bombing a city to get two bad guys. Showing that I can work through treatments and focus on positivity through adversity.” That was 12 years ago. Mary’s story helped scores of others dealing with breast cancer, and she’s heard from many viewers thanking her for those reports. As the health reporter for decades, she grew frustrated during the controversy around COVID. “Public health officials save lives by telling you things they’ve learned to keep you healthy, and it was strange to have people doubt their intent,” she said.Another side to Mary Nickles’ life is coaching, from little kids into high school, including volleyball at Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper.“My daughter played in the younger parochial leagues, and I just wanted her to have fun. I wanted to teach them the basic skills of the sport and help them fall in love with it. I coached the freshmen, and when they got good enough, they moved to the next gym with the varsity.”Another one of Mary’s loves is cooking, something she learned from her mother, who would make a meal and “add a handful of this or a spoonful of that.” She found when she posts her meals on social media (35,000 followers on Facebook) people want the recipes, and it’s fun to share. “I learned ways to feed our twins (Zachary and MacKenzie) healthy things, like chopping up carrots and spinach in our spaghetti sauce. They were getting their veggies and didn’t even know it.”She says Kent is her sous chef, and preps a lot of the vegetables, and they make a double batch of taco meat, salmon, or roast, so they can make a different, easy meal out of the other half later. And they have an outline for a cookbook in one of their kitchen cupboards.In fact, she donates meals to be auctioned off at fundraisers, and they’ve raised thousands of dollars for causes close to her heart, like Image Reborn Foundation, Children’s Service Society, and Ronald McDonald House. “I love using notoriety to help charity.”Next to family, though, news is always a passion for Nickles.“I would like to keep doing this as long as I can, and I’d miss it. Even when I’m on vacation, I still check headlines and still look on our website. I don’t want to be out of the loop. Up at 1:30 a.m., to the station by 3:45 a.m. and on air at 4:25 a.m. Being a journalist is fascinating and fun, and I never get tired of telling our viewers the news they need to know.”Looks like that cookbook will have to remain on the back burner for now. λ</div></body>

Mountain View, CA

NewsBreak

Mary Nickles loves reporting the news more than ever

Nickles and co-anchor Ron Bird have done the morning show on 2News for the past 27 years. Photo courtesy of Mary Nickles. If Mary Nickles wasn’t so good at telling television viewers what’s going on in their world every morning, she might be writing a cookbook. Fortunately for Salt Lake City and much of the Intermountain West, the popular and award-winning news anchor for KUTV 2News has no plans to shift gears.