Bill Kurtis retires from 'Wait Wait...' NPR quiz show after 12-year run

Longtime Chicago newsman Bill Kurtis, along with his signature baritone pipes, is retiring from his role as judge and scorekeeper on NPR's weekly hour-long news quiz program “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!”

"It's certainly not for a lack of love," Kurtis said, noting that he gets more positive interaction from being on the show than anything else he's done in his career.

"But I'm 85, and I'm a healthy 85, thank God, but it is about time I started living like it," Kurtis said, noting that, after his last official show airs the weekend of May 23, he plans to continue contributing to the show on a more limited basis.

The news was shared in a memo to staff Monday.

"It's so good to be able to wrap up a 60-year career with a fun show where the reaction is laughing, I mean, that's the job of this thing," said Kurtis, who was a mainstay of Chicago’s television news landscape for decades, appearing at the anchor desk alongside Walter Jacobson on WBBM and nationally with Diane Sawyer on CBS Morning News.

"I couldn't be happier," Kurtis said, adding that NPR was planning a send off for him.

"Carl, you know, had dancing girls come out as his colleagues at NPR feted him," he said of his predecessor on the show, the late newcaster Carl Kasell. "I don't know what mine will be. I said, 'Look anything you do is OK with me.'"

Show host Peter Sagal said he still can't believe sometimes he's had the chance to work with Kurtis for 12 years.

"I just keep coming back to the fact that: It's Bill Kurtis! I remember meeting Bill Kurtis, God, 25 years ago, maybe, at an event, and going 'Oh my God I'm in a room with Bill Kurtis,'" Sagal said. "And hearing that voice coming out of that face and that hair and I still sometimes have that reaction when I look to my right on stage, and it still sort of surprises and shocks me that I get to do this with a giant of broadcasting."

Sagal said it's been a pleasure seeing Kurtis, whose natural sense of humor didn't always come through in news broadcasts, shine on the show.

"That was a great joy to be able to show that side, or more of that side, to the world for so long," he said.

The show has rehearsals and tapes on Thursdays before a live audience at the Studebaker Theater in the Loop and airs on weekend mornings.

The show's members have become like family to Kurtis and his wife, Donna LaPietra.

Sagal got married in the couple's garden on their 65-acre property in the Northwest Suburbs. And when Kurtis and his wife couldn't make the recent nuptials of another staffer, they hosted the couple and a few dozen others at their home and played the, "The Newlywed Game," with Kurtis playing host.

"The funny thing about Bill is he's game for anything," said Mike Danforth, the show's executive producer. "Whenever we write something dumb for him to do, he'll do it and he loves it more than any of us."

Danforth said the "stars aligned" when Kurtis joined the show 12 years ago.

"The guy's got an incredible voice; so many people have cool voices but not everyone knows how to use them, but he has a great sense of humor, too," he said.

His voice has been described on the show as the "cause for Aunt Sally to have a sexual awakening."

Danforth also said Kurtis' improvisational chops will be missed, like the tagline he inserted after reading a standard Subaru promotion on the show: "... and its one hot, bitchin, ride."

Producers aren't giving any hint as to who might replace Kurtis on the show but one person who has been filling in lately is Alzo Slade, a comedian and Vice news correspondent.

"Alzo has a great voice and he's a funny guy and I don't know, he's kind of cool, he's cooler than we are," Danforth said.