Peggy Kusinski can pinpoint the exact moment she knew she wanted to pursue a career in sports television.

She had just walked into her brother’s apartment at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where he and his friends were so glued to the television they didn’t look up when she came in. When she asked what they were watching, they said: “Oh, it’s called ESPN. It’s all sports, all the time.”

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That might have intrigued her enough if not for the woman on screen, Gayle Gardner, who was incidentally one of the first women to anchor a nightly network sports broadcast (SportsCenter). Jeannie Morris, a trailblazing sports broadcaster and journalist from the late 1960s through the ‘90s, was a local inspiration.

“That was like my aha Oprah moment of, wait a minute, I could actually do that?” said Kusinski, who grew up on the northwest side in Norwood Park.

So she did it, switching from theater and communications to radio/television to pursue broadcasting. It would take eight years to get her first on-air opportunity, but it ultimately led to a 30-plus-year career in Chicago, where she’s worked for The Score, WLUP, WMAQ radio, ESPN radio and most recently NBC, where she’s worked since 2001.

But in September 2016, she decided to take a step back from daily sports reporting, shifting gears to investigative work and special reports. Over the last couple years, Kusinski has reported on the Wheaton College football hazing scandal, transgender athletes and an Illinois coach banned from USA Gymnastics. She also made a return to Bears coverage for the team’s brief playoff run.

Last week, The Athletic sat down with Kusinski to discuss her career, Chicago sports, being a woman in a male-dominated industry, stepping away from the day-to-day grind and more.

Where did your love for sports come from?

It’s funny, my mom actually was the athlete of my parents. My mom had played basketball at Alvernia High School which doesn’t even exist anymore, where they played six on six. And my mom was the one that really was such a huge sports fan. She used to say that she was the son that her dad didn’t have, until 10 years later when he had two boys. So she just grew up loving sports. She played sports back in the ’40s and the ’50s, and I have seven brothers, so it was just kind of a take your sister with you indoctrination. … And then basketball really became my sport in seventh and eighth grade. I had great coaches who played collegiately at DePaul, men’s team, were our coaches, and then went on to Resurrection (High School), and I was, I think I was second-team all-state. … And I went to college thinking I was probably going to be a P.E. teacher cause that just seemed like what everybody did back in the ’70s if you played sports.

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Did you have sort of a big break?

So I came back to Chicago and I actually took an internship at NBC. I interviewed in the sports department, and Mark Giangreco was at NBC at the time, and Warner Saunders was also doing sports. And the producer, his way of interviewing me was, I know you’re probably too young to remember Trivial Pursuit, well back when they actually had a Trivial Pursuit board game, the sports questions were all the orange questions. And so his way of interviewing me for the internship was to take the orange questions, and he just started asking me the orange questions. And I just collapsed in the chair thinking, this sucks, this is horrible. And I remember I took the “L” home, and was so angry sitting on the “L,” because I thought, well, that can’t possibly be all it takes to be an intern in the sports department, is you have to know every stat in sports. So when I got home, I called him up, and I said, “I just want you to know something, just because I didn’t know those answers, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to find those answers. ‘Cause I actually think trying to find those answers is more important than actually knowing everything.” I was so angry. Well, I didn’t get the internship, needless to say.

I ended up getting the internship at NBC in the programming department, which was my second choice, and that actually turned out to be a huge blessing, because they had talk shows back in the day, and I had to learn how to put together a talk show, and how to get guests, and how to find an audience that would be interested in that topic … I left there shortly thereafter, I went and did a Sportscasters Camp of America in St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, and it was all guys, and they were staying in the dorms, and they had never had a woman before, so they put me up in like a Motel 6, while everybody else was in the dorms, and that was really one of my big breaks, because one of the instructors at the sportscasters camp was an assignment desk editor at ESPN, and he said, hey, you should send your resume because we’re trying to get more women at ESPN. So I went and interviewed for one of the six-month jobs as a production assistant and got the job, and spent six months working 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. and really, that was my graduate school. That was my master’s degree was going to Bristol, Connecticut.

Did you feel strongly about staying in Chicago?

I was really willing to go anywhere. I was always too Chicago for other markets. When I went on interviews they would say, “You’re too Chicago. You have a Chicago accent, you know, you wouldn’t fly here.” The closest I came to taking another job was in Cincinnati. Their sports anchor was leaving to go to like Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight or one of those shows, and they offered me the job, and I walked around downtown Cincinnati, and my agent at the time, Todd Musberger, said, you’ll know it’s the right job if you can see yourself there. And I stood in downtown Cincinnati and I looked around, and I said, I just don’t feel it. So I stayed at CLTV, and I just kept, I mean I was calling every radio station, and Mark Giangreco was doing the Kevin Matthews show, he was doing sports at the old Loop, and I was constantly calling in, constantly trying to get myself on the air. Eventually they called and said, “Hey, Mark’s oversleeping a couple times, are you available?” And so I became his fill-in, and that was how I stayed in Chicago. Larry Wert was the general manager, and when he moved over to NBC, I just kept sending my resumes until they finally called and gave me a chance. It was me, David Kaplan, Tom Thayer, and all three of us were going to cover the Bears, and each of us would do a story one day a week, and it was kind of an audition to see who would stick. And so I stuck.

What was it like when you started at NBC?

I started, I had just gotten pregnant with my twins. And I remember I was pregnant with them when 9/11 happened, and I was sitting in my condo, and NBC had just offered me the job, and I thought, wow, this is a crazy time. Do you call them to say, do you need any extra help? This isn’t a small market, I don’t think they’re going to use a sports person to cover 9/11, but at the same time, I wanted to be involved, I wanted to do what I could. And then I thought, oh gosh, how am I gonna tell them I’m pregnant with twins? I can’t tell them, I just got the job!

One of my fondest memories of being pregnant with twins working at Channel 5 as a new sports reporter was one of the cameramen, Silvio, he looked over at me and I was so nauseous, and we were driving, I think we were on Ohio St., downtown, in the news van, and he looked over, and he said, “You’re not going to get sick, are you?” I said, “Actually I am, pull over.” (laughs) … And that season covering the Bears, I got sick in every press box, because, the bathrooms are not female friendly in the NFL press boxes, if you even had, back then, a female bathroom. Quite often it was just a unisex bathroom, and it was disgusting. And I would go in, I specifically remember the old Metrodome in Minnesota, and I would always switch seats with whoever sat on the end of the row of the press box because I knew I was going to be getting up getting sick. And so that was kind of the year that I got sick in every press box bathroom on the Bears’ schedule that year.

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Did you feel some internal pressure to get back to work soon after having the twins?

It was just over two weeks since I had my twins I went back to work. And I think at that time I was more worried about, you know when you’re younger, you’re extremely competitive, and you gotta keep your job. There were people calling the station, “Oh, do you need someone to fill in while Peggy’s gone?” I mean, the body was not even cold yet, and they were calling trying to get my job.

I wanted to get back, I wanted to…I never saw myself as a stay-at-home mom. I just knew that it would be very difficult. And then when I had my daughter, six years later, I did take the full three months, and I just felt like I needed that with her. It’s funny, I had a cameraman from another station say to me, “Why are you back at work, shouldn’t you be at home with those babies?” And I was really offended by that. And I loved him, he’s a dear friend, but I was really offended by that. And I remember telling a friend of mine who worked in a restaurant, she and her husband owned a restaurant in the neighborhood, and she said, “You know what, Peggy? Anyone can change a diaper, anyone can feed a baby, anyone can put them down. When you’re a working mom, you overcompensate. When you’re home, you’re holding the baby, you’re doing everything. You’re not missing out on those bonding moments.” She said, “You need to be home when they’re teenagers. That’s when the problems get big.” And I never forgot that. And I did believe it.

Now, for anyone else, you have to feel it. If you feel you need to be there when they are babies, then by all means, that’s what you have to do. But for me, I didn’t feel that. I truly did feel that I would know when the time was right. And for me, the time was right two years ago. That was when my boys were 14, and they were going to be starting high school downtown, they were going to be taking an hour commute every day, and I mean, that, to me was, and I was traveling way too much, and the job had changed way too much. It was, they were asking us to do more and more and more, and I knew, time to put the brakes on. This is when I need to be more available. Not home, because I always hated when the athletes would say, you know, oh, I’m retiring to spend more time at home. There’s a lot of BS in that. So I just needed to be more available. I needed to be around just in case, you know, I needed to be there. ‘Cause I knew that there were gonna be some difficult times. You have teenagers. So that was when I knew. And it was the right decision.

How did the job change?

Social media hit, and we were no longer just competing with putting stories on our 5 o’clock and 6 o’clock newscasts and then taping something for a 10 o’clock, we were 24/7. I mean, you had to be tied to your phone with Twitter, you had to be constantly interacting on Facebook. And then all of a sudden, the teams in Chicago were getting good, the Blackhawks were winning, and the Cubs were winning, and we went from traveling with the Bears to traveling with the Blackhawks to traveling with the Cubs, and oh by the way, you have to do reports for the 4 o’clock, 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock, cover a game, do a live shot after the game at 10:30, tape something for the morning show, and oh, you might have to be back the next morning for skate-around at 10 a.m., and then it starts all over again. Now, yes, that was only during playoffs, but the job really did change a lot. And nowhere else in the news business, in television news, do they ask people to work at 10 a.m., 4, 5, 6, cover a game, 10:30, I mean, no one else has to do that except in sports. And they always say, “Oh well it evens itself out,” and it doesn’t, not in a city like Chicago.

And it got very difficult. It became hard to keep up with. The stress level was very high. And it takes a toll on your families. This is a really hard industry on families, and I think that it’s not whether you’re a woman or the mom, it’s men and women. It takes a toll. It’s very difficult on relationships, responsibilities, being there for the simple things. You know, I missed my one son was in the talent show three straight years and I never saw him, and they would send it to me on FaceTime, and I would be traveling, in tears, thinking, oh my gosh, this is terrible. During the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup run in Tampa, I came home, I got permission from my bosses at NBC to fly home in between games for my daughter’s dance recital, and then I had to leave the dance recital as soon as she was done performing, I left flowers with my husband, I ran out with my suitcase, ran back to the airport, caught a 2 o’clock flight, landed in Tampa, got in a cab and walked in the arena during the anthem for a Stanley Cup Final game. And everything had to align perfectly so that I would make it.

But that’s what started happening at the end of my career, I was missing too much at home. And I had to, it was just adding up. It felt like I was covering the Bears in Detroit every Thanksgiving, every Christmas. And it just, the stress level was too much, and it just got to a point where I felt like, you know, I lost my sister at the same time, that played a big part in it, and I just had to make a decision at that point, like it was eye-opening to me. What am I doing? What am I doing? I’m stressed out, I’m short-tempered at home, I’m missing out on important moments, and for what? For what? So for me, everything was falling into place to tell me, it’s time to step back. It’s time to take a step back.

Were your kids aware of what you did when they were younger?

Yeah, our sitter one year gave me a Christmas gift and it was a picture she took of me on TV and my daughter as a baby standing up in front of the screen watching. And it broke my heart, it was like, ugh, I know it was cute, but it like, oh, wow. So yes, the boys were much easier, the boys dealt with it and got it. My daughter did not get it. She cried all the time when I left the house, all the time when I was going out of town. But I get it when athletes would say, you know sometimes I just want to hang on so my kids know what I did, because an athlete’s career is over by 40. And their kids might be, if they’re lucky their kids are 10 and they know. I totally understand with that. I wanted my daughter to see me as a working woman, as a powerful woman in the workforce, and I was like, oh boy, I don’t know if she’s ever going to see me as a working woman, you know? And that was really important to me. Now my boys always saw it, and now one of them wants to follow in my footsteps, and he writes for Fansided, and SB Nation, and he’s in high school. (Editor’s note: Earlier this week, Kusinski’s son scooped our own Ken Rosenthal.) So it’s cool to see that. But at the same time like I want them to pick up the other things about my husband and I that are fun. My other son (is) an extremely talented chef, and he’s only 16, and we always cooked. I cooked five days a week, and I cook scratch. So it’s really fun to see your kids pick up on other aspects of your life, not just what you did for a living. So yeah, they were aware. My daughter is just now I think understanding what I always did before. I don’t know how much she actually remembers.

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It seems like you’re ultimately happy with your decision?

I am but I’m also very, I struggle with it.

Why?

Because I’ve never not worked. It’s funny, I just was meeting with our insurance guy, and he said, what are you doing these days? I said, “Oh gosh don’t ask me that. Because I don’t know how to answer it. My nephew asked me last week. “Aunt Peggy, what are you doing these days?” I said, “Uh, I call it semi-retired, but really it’s pretty much 95 percent I’m just afraid to pull my foot out and call it 100 percent, just because I always worked.” And he said, “Well, you worked hard your whole life, it’s OK.” And that’s what’s hard for me to accept. Cause it’s like, ugh, I know, I get it, but there’s still things I want to do, so, and I’ll do them.

What do you miss about working and covering games?

The people. The people. I miss the, you know, the athletes would always say they miss the locker room, I miss the media rooms. I miss laughing until my cameraman, Matt Byrne, and I would cry, cause we would laugh so hard at some stupid, silly spin that we were putting on a story at Bears practice. We would laugh so hard. If someone else came in and looked at the story, they would not think it was as funny as we did. But I also used to think that that’s what made Matt and my stories stand out, is we weren’t afraid to take a chance that somebody else at home would laugh with us. Or, you know, I would ask a question of Lovie Smith and I knew it might be a little bit irreverent, but if he knew me well enough, he was gonna get it, why I was asking that, and play along with me. I love that banter, and I love the people in the media room. Just the camaraderie, the competition, it’s not that often that you, you’re all together in the same room, and athletes and coaches and teams think that we’re the media, when really we’re all competing against each other inside that room. I loved the competition, loved to compete for a story, loved the pursuit of a story. That’s what I miss.

Do you have a favorite story that you worked on?

I think maybe my favorite story would have to be one that I was a producer on at ESPN and it gave me the confidence to pitch the types of stories that I thought I would be good at. And I was Jimmy Roberts’ producer at ESPN, and I had pitched this story after watching daytime television in my apartment, the Sally Jessy Raphael show, it was called, and there was a woman who was married to a Miami Dolphin football player talking about being stalked by a guy that she knew from high school. And her name was Kathleen Baty. And Kathleen Baty, it was a harrowing story of being stalked and abducted while her husband was at training camp. And I went into the office at ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut that day when I went to work and I pitched the story. And NFL GameDay was so new that they were really doing a lot of X’s and O’s stories. And for me to come in and get a story idea that came from daytime television talk show, I really had to pitch it and why it was important. And what Jimmy and I came up with was, here’s this big strapping athlete who makes a living pounding bodies and yet, could not protect his wife. And that’s how we pitched it. And we did the story, and ended up winning a national Emmy for it, it was our first one. And I was very proud of that, because that was my story.

When I left ESPN and I was working the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Bob Costas walked up in the hallway, I was working for NBC, they had called it the triple-cast, I was a graphics producer. And I struck up a conversation with Bob Costas, and I told him that I lived in Chicago but I just finished working at ESPN, and when I told him that I had produced this story with Jimmy Roberts, he said, “I remember that story. We don’t do a lot of stories like that and it made me remember it.” And I thought, oh my gosh, that was all I needed, was to hear Bob Costas say it. Even though I had won an Emmy already as an associate producer, that to me was all the validation I needed.

Did you ever deal with harassment in the locker room?

One of, I would say, one of my attributes was that I was a good observer. And I didn’t go in so much trying to get attention to myself, but I liked to stand back and kind of observe the scene, and just kind of pick up on little things. And back when I was at CLTV, when I would go into the Cubs clubhouse … I watched, and I saw a group of players kind of talking out of the side of their mouth and they were watching the media. So I kind of looked over to see who they were watching, and they were looking at the women in the locker room, in the clubhouse. And they were testing the women, and they would say stuff to try to get their attention, and you know, the women weren’t biting. Not them, but I was told later by some players when I asked them off the record, they said, oh, we always test the women, we test to see if they’re looking, we test to see if they’re doing their jobs, we test to see if they’re really in here for whatever reason. And I thought, well that stinks, ’cause they certainly don’t test the guys.

But I learned really quick, even if you’re just grabbing your microphone, and you’re looking down, whatever, the old rule of eyes up, eyes up, because I don’t know a single woman that ever ever would look purposely, ever. If ever, it’s just by accident and you’re getting something out of your bag and you’re like, oops, you know. But yeah, they tested. Back in ’92, ’93, ’94, oh yeah, they did. But it was really, it was how you carried yourself, it was how you carried yourself, and you were always in control of what you wanted them to think of you. Always. And I think that holds true today. It is totally up to you. And I’ll be honest with you, I have no problem if a guy, you know, you’re going to buddy buddy up with a guy and the other reporters get all angry, oh my god, he’s just you know, a suck-up, you know, and a woman is gonna flirt, I don’t have a problem with that, I really don’t. You just have to own, whatever you decide your m.o. is going to be, you have to own that, and you’re the one that has to sleep at night, that’s all. I mean, honestly, people make mistakes, they grow out of those phases, you have to own it though, and that’s the one thing I always tell men and women: you own your reputation. You are in control of what you want them to think of you.

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Did you notice athletes’ attitudes towards women evolve over time?

Yeah, oh yeah. You could tell once we hit the athletes whose mothers played sports, you could see the difference in the locker rooms. You know, their mom was a collegiate athlete, their sisters play college sports. Yeah, there was definitely much more of a shift in acceptance on the athletes’ side.

But you know, let’s not forget that we went through a phase in the ’90s where, we used to call it the “Fox-ification” of women in sports. And that was when Fox nationally just started hiring models in the sports industry in television, and so many women who were trying to break into broadcasting at the time, it was like the shoulders just slumped and it was like, ugh (sighs). Like, really. Like you just took us back. So when people would say, “Oh, is it hard?” You’re like “Really?” It’s been 40 years women have been in locker rooms. And why does it keep coming up? Because whenever that happens and they hire non-qualified women, it sets us all back. And you just, you get so frustrated.

But I think now, there are so many women working in the industry, it’s what you should want. There are all shapes, all sizes, all types of qualifications, or not qualified, but that’s more of a reflection of society. So like, that’s OK, that’s what you face in any job, anywhere. So now it just means there’s more women, which is good. There’s all different kinds now. You may not like her, you may like her, you may not care for her, hey, that’s OK. There’s just more of us now. And that’s a good thing.

It seems like Chicago has at least one female sports reporter at every TV station now.

I don’t think that any other market has as many women, especially at the owned and operated stations, ABC, CBS, NBC, WGN, FOX. … I might be wrong, I don’t know if any other market has like Chicago has, and it’s great. I think what we have seen is less of a … I think we have really smart women covering sports in Chicago. And I love that we have seasoned veteran women. My concern is that we need women who report and are journalists, too. And I don’t think, I think that that’s my only concern. You know, don’t hire anyone to fill a quota. Because you lose longevity if you’re just filling a quota. And for any reporter, you want staying power, you want longevity. So listen, the looks are gonna go. You’re gonna become 55 years old. You’re gonna gain weight. And then what? Oh my god, you don’t have a career? No, you better bring something else to the table. You better have something else. So be a good reporter. Work on your craft as a reporter. Constantly work to better yourself. That’s how you get longevity.

I’m 55 years old. And I used to say, gosh, I hope I make it to 50, I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. Because I think Jeannie Morris was off the air in Chicago in her late 40s. And I used to say, I just want to hit 50, I want to break that barrier. Shoot, I’m 55, I could still work. But you know, you need to have the audience, the respect, you need to have the journalism skills, because that, it certainly isn’t going to be your looks, not in your 50s.

Do you still keep up with Chicago sports like you did when you were working every day?

Well, you know, it’s interesting. I watch a lot more as a fan. I still watch the Bears every week, although my first year off the beat, I did not watch them at all. That was John Fox’s last year. And I did not miss it (laughs). But I will say that now having my son growing up as a budding journalist, I’m probably watching more sports than I did before, because he watches it from the moment he wakes up at 5:30 in the morning until the moment he goes to bed. And we have lots and lots of discussions about it. We’re constantly talking about what’s going on with this team and what’s going on with this team and who’s this player and what are they doing. It’s really funny. I think he and I have more sports conversations than anyone else in the house. So I would say that I definitely keep up now, but not as, I don’t feel glued to reading two newspapers, everything that is Google searched on a matchup, a game matchup like I used to do, the way I would prepare. I don’t feel like I have to be listening all the time to sports radio, now I just listen at my leisure. Yeah, so I keep up, but it’s in a much less stressful way.

More enjoyable, I’m sure.

Exactly.

Do you think you’ll get back into sports in some capacity outside of NBC?

You know, I would love to do a podcast. I’ve really tossed that around. I wanted to do it with my son, but a 16-year-old wants nothing to do with his mom talking sports. We’ll talk sports all the time at home, but I don’t think that he wants to launch his career on the heels of his 55-year-old mother. But I’ve had a couple of meetings with people about doing that. My daughter’s doing acting and the Second City stuff so I’ll live vicariously through her for now. For now.

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Is that something you’re interested in doing?

I’m tempted … that’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to do. So I’m doing a lot of those things that, what would you do, if you had the opportunity. And that’s what I’m doing. But I’m still driven, I still love the pursuit of stories, I still love the performing. But for my family’s sake, let’s figure out what I can do and still be accessible.

I’m actually taking voiceover classes at the Acting Studio, just because I always hated my voice, and I wanted to see, how do you actually train a voice? So I’ve been doing that. And I filled in at the Bears during the playoffs, which was fun, although I let a “suck” word slip on the air, little rusty not being on the air, we didn’t get our license taken away or anything, but it was great to be around everybody and to see everyone for that.

And I’m just, you know, I’m taking care of myself. I’m traveling a lot, I’m in a much better place physically. I had vertigo for 20 years. And I dealt with it every single day for 20 years. And when you’re working, you don’t take care of yourself physically. And I saw myself like falling apart physically too, and I thought, OK. So I made a list of all the things physically I’m going to take care of, and I have finally cured my vertigo, knock on wood, after 20 years. And it was rough. I went for treatments pretty regularly, and it was nauseating, but finally I can actually turn over in bed, work out in the morning and not get dizzy. I mean, they’re little things, but they add up into a quality of life. And I think that we fall into a really, a bad cycle in the news industry where you’re just, you don’t take care of yourself anymore, and things add up, and I have the luxury now to actually take care of myself and do the things I want to do.

(Top photo courtesy of Peggy Kusinski)

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