Colleen Marshall celebrates 40 years at NBC4
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Colleen Marshall knows why she still looks forward to coming to work, almost 40 years to the day after she arrived at NBC4.
"I still come into this room every day because I love this job," she said. "I could be out there practicing law full time, but I still I keep thinking there's another story out there that I just haven't quite gotten yet, that there's another one on the horizon."
And the mission continues for Marshall, a weeknight anchor who doggedly pursues stories with the same sense of purpose that brought her to Columbus on Oct. 6, 1984. These days, she anchors NBC4 at 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. alongside Kerry Charles, her fourth permanent partner.
Marshall, whose personal anniversary coincides with 75 years of NBC4 as Columbus' first television station, sat down with Charles to reflect on her time at the station. Their conversation, which touches on her history, the role of women in the newsroom and even her many, many hairstyles over the years, can be viewed below.
Watch: Kerry Charles and Colleen Marshall discuss her 40 years with NBC4
When Marshall said she could instead be practicing law full time, that's true. In 2000, while in her 40s, she heard from a coworker about a program at Capital University and decided to take it on, while continuing to report the news. She completed her degree in four years. That internal drive for Marshall, a native of southwestern Pennsylvania, has churned for years.
She came to NBC4, then branded as WCMH, in 1984 from a station in Wheeling, West Virginia, at a time when the options for women reporting the news were limited. But she never wanted much to do with light content.
"I can have a good time, but it's serious business," she said in a 1992 interview. "My credibility is important. I've always done hard news."
That was the year she was promoted to the main anchor desk. Previously, she had been a weekend anchor while reporting three days a week. When a spot opened next to weeknight anchor Doug Adair, the man who helped make WCMH the top station in Columbus during the previous decade, he knew he wanted Marshall at his side.
"Colleen is just about the best reporter-anchor I've ever met," Adair, who died in 2019, said in a 1992 interview. "She can handle herself out in the field as well as at the anchor desk."
"He supported me," Marshall said. "He encouraged me. He would review my tapes with me. He's the reason I became an anchor. He encouraged them to make me the weekend anchor. I owe a lot to Doug."
Adair retired in 1994, and Marshall settled in alongside Cabot Rea, forming Columbus' longest-lasting anchor pairing. Rea had come from the 5:30 news, a lighter fare show that Marshall never warmed to ("I'm just not comfortable with it," she said). After Rea's retirement in 2015, Mike Jackson joined Marshall, where his warm voice was matched by his warm nature. In the video above, that's Jackson tossing a stuffed spider at Marshall as a Halloween prank. Jackson suffered a stroke in 2019 before he died one year ago.
She's now been paired with Charles for four years.
Look: Colleen Marshall over the years at NBC4
In her reporting, Marshall dedicates herself to many causes: disputes in Ohio's teacher pension system; sexual abuse victims of a former Ohio State University team physician; the weekly political show she hosts, The Spectrum; and most personal of all, the impact that Alzheimer's can have on individuals and their loved ones. Marshall's mother died from the disease.
Marshall has interviewed Catholics fighting doubt, death row inmates, pundits and presidents.
"You have to get answers from people who are in positions of power and often in positions of power because voters put them there," she said.
But the biggest story she covered personally was the September 11 attacks, when she and three others from the station reported from the scene in the days that followed. She got through a security perimeter near Ground Zero by saying she worked for NBC4, and to this day, she wonders if the officer mistakenly thought she meant the affiliate in New York.
"Looking back at those images, it almost seems like a movie," Marshall said in 2019. "It seems like this couldn't have been real, that we lived through that, that Manhattan looked like that."
It's not all news for Marshall, a proud mother of son Garrett and daughter Shannon. Her husband, Gary, is a former NBC4 news photographer. Together, Colleen and Gary have adopted 18 shelter dogs, all of whom were either elderly or disabled.
No, slowing down isn't in the offing for Marshall. When asked for two names of people she'd like to interview, she said Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
The mission continues.