Ken Meyer interviews Joyce Kulhawik!
WBCA Podcasts
City Talk with Ken Meyer (Joyce Kulhawik)
Hello once again everybody welcome to City Talk. My name is Ken Meyer and one of the great things about doing this show is as I have said so often you get to interview who you want and admire and a lady whom I have admired ever since she's been on the air and love to watch on BZ-TV is the very beautiful and very charming Joyce go Haywick. Oh Ken I'm in love with you already. Oh good yeah most people took a lot longer. I didn't think it would happen this fast. Thank you so much Ken really it's a pleasure to be here. Oh I am thrilled that we were finally able to put this together because we started talking about this in March. Yeah I guess that's true. And here it is July but but we're able to do this the cameras oh I'm sorry no no cameras. No cameras but voice. You can get rid of the makeup. And I love oh god no not at this stage. Listen one of the things that I found like I knew when I was 10 years old that I wanted to get into radio. My parents gave me a tape recorder. I was hooked on a microphone and my voice ever since then but your path's a little different. So I want to know how you went from Simmons College to a school teacher at Brookline High to a part-time host on Evening Magazine and take all the time you want to tell that story. Well you know it is kind of an interesting story and it goes way back before Simmons College in Boston although that was the first time I ever was in Boston which it was to come to college. And I actually grew up in Bridgeport Connecticut a really tough working-class town and I'm proud of it. It gave me a really good work ethic and don't mess with me. I looked like I went to a finishing school but you don't want to argue with me. Don't mess with me baby I can just see it. So I actually grew up in Bridgeport Connecticut outside of New York City and that was the only city that I knew. And so I thought all cities were like New York and we get to Boston and we pull into Copley Square and I'm like 17 and I look around and I said oh well this is really cute. Where's the city? And they said you're in it. I thought oh okay so Boston's a whole different kind of place and I loved it and never wanted to leave. So that's just a little small digression but I always imagined that I would set up my professional life and my personal life in Boston. I love this city for so many reasons but really what I wanted to do in life I'll tell you what I wanted to do. I wanted to either be an actress or a nun. Oh no that's different yep. Actually they have a lot in common. There's a lot of drama involved in both you know. But I loved, I always love the arts honestly to be just a little more serious. I loved singing and dancing and music and acting and performing and I used to do, I took ballet and tap. I played piano. I was my parish church organist and soloist. From the time I was 11 years old I used to sing high regway of masses in Latin. I used to do weddings and funerals and it was fantastic and I loved it and I also was like helping out at the convent and we lived two doors away from the church and you know so there was a lot of different stuff going on and I always imagined myself involved in theater or movies. I love the movies but I also love to talk and to write and these things are all connected really and truly. It's all about storytelling and the arts. Whether you're telling that story through dance or music or through theater or through movies and or speaking or writing and I have a very good sense of analysis. I like to analyze things and figure out what all the parts are and how do they all work together. So I majored in English and I minored in education and music and then I went to grad school for English and then switched it to a masters of English teaching in grad school and then I came out and I didn't know what the heck to do except that I'd been trained as a teacher didn't necessarily want to teach and but so I sort of like you know floated around for a little bit looking into all different kinds of jobs and I just knew I wanted a fun job and I didn't have I didn't think I had enough talent to be a concert pianist or a ballet dancer or an actress but I still wanted to be in that world somehow. So I um I just sort of cast around for a whole bunch of things and I found a job on I walked up Boylston Street and started knocking on the doors of advertising agencies and ended up getting a job called at Mass Casting Corporation where they made TV and radio commercials and I thought oh that sounds like fun you know I mean before I settle down to do my serious life's work I'm going to have some fun so I made um TV and radio commercials and I got to answer the phone and you know say hello to folks when they came in and make coffee you know nothing too strenuous until one day two guys walked into the office looked at me and said hey would you like to be in a TV commercial and I said oh sure that sounds great and they said well we can't pay you and I thought well I don't care you know what do I care they said but we can give you a video portfolio so I said terrific and I ended up making a commercial for the Plainfield, Connecticut dog racing track and I had to pretend that I was on a date with someone and we had bed on a dog and there was makeup and camera and lights and I thought oh this is hysterical and I loved it I had to act a little bit you know it was a commercial and our dog won of course we had to be excited and then they at the end of the whole process they gave me a videotape which at that time I mean this was back in the mid 70s you know videotape looked like the size of a small suitcase right I mean they were enormous and also I had no equipment on which to play this thing so I decided that I would take this into different department stores where they had video equipment and like popping into different machines but I could never get it to play because it was a commercial sized tape so I took it home tucked it away and sort of forgot about it so I actually never saw what was on the tape and then I got a phone call from a place where I'd done my student teaching which happened to be one of the best high schools in the country Brookline High School and they asked me to come in mid-year and fill in for a teacher who was going on maternity leave and I said oh I don't think I really want to teach but they called me three times and finally I said okay okay I might as well try this and I taught for two and a half years and I have to be honest and say that it was the hardest job I ever tried to do I think I was too young to do it I got asked out to the junior prom my second week there I had to explain that I would be going but as a chaperone because I was a teacher I mean it was really bizarre and but I felt like I was too young the kids were 17 I was 22 or 23 I thought it was so emotionally demanding and then the hours I am not a morning person so for this this for me you know is like really stretching I like the crack of noon you know I like to be up at that time so it was early morning hours it was paperwork it was ables it was discipline and then maybe you got to the Shakespeare and the diagramming sentences and you know whatever it was that I night taught everything from basic grammar and composition to honor Shakespeare so I love the kids I love the material but there were so many things about it that were just not for me oh so I just gotten out of school and I thought I don't want to be in a school and I don't want the academic year and I felt like I was in a prison and so I quit cold after two and a half years and everybody with the exception of my mother said that I was crazy that it would get easier that this was one of the best high schools that I had my summers all you know all the usual arguments that it was a good job to fall back on you know for good for a woman I thought you know if there's got to be more to life for me than this I have to find a job that I am excited about that makes my heart beat fast and I didn't care if I looked around for five years you know if I waited tables or you know whatever I did that I was going to hold out and my mother agreed she said Joyce if you don't like it quit you're young you can go anywhere you're totally mobile you can do anything it was fine and so I went for it and that summer because I had the summer off because I had been teaching I spent looking around and three sort of semi-mystical things happened to me that summer pointing me toward my career one was that I just happened to flip the TV on one day and I saw this show called Evening Magazine on the air and it was a brand new show hosted by Robin Young and Marty Sender and they looked like normal people but they were out in the field reporting on these really interesting exciting things like the new donut shop down the street or they were writing in hot air balloons or you know whatever it was and I thought gee that looks like something I could do but I you know never really thought about that in any serious way and the next thing I did was make an appointment at Simmons College with the communications department where I have not ever been I majored in English but I went to communications thinking oh maybe there's something there and I remember meeting with the chair of the department and after a two-hour conversation I said so do you think I might possibly have a future on television he said well let me see your teeth and I smiled at him I had no idea I maybe he was just pulling my leg you know in another era it would have been let me see your legs or something like that but it was let me see your teeth he said you know what here's the name of somebody this young woman who graduated from Simmons she's now producing a new show on television called Evening Magazine you might want to give her a call so there was a second time I got that name and then the third thing that happened that summer but you know I didn't I didn't call her I didn't follow up thinking oh I don't know whatever the third thing that happened was that I was preparing to be married that summer and I my future mother-in-law owns a stationary store and was preparing our wedding invitations she also was preparing wedding invitations that summer for another woman who was leaving her job in Boston to go move to the city where her husband lived and that woman her name was Nancy Glass and she was an on-air personality on a new show called Evening Magazine and my future mother-in-law said hey I just heard from Nancy Glass's mother and she said they can't find a replacement for Nancy on the air on their audition 40 people so this was the third time this name had come up and actually somewhere in the course of the summer a fortune teller had told me that you know something big was going to happen to me the last week of August the third week of August so I thought you know I'm gonna give them a call so I called them up when I said hi um my name is Joyce Kilhaywick I'm a school teacher out of work they said well do you have a video portfolio and I said oh well as a matter of fact I do I do have a video portfolio and they said we'll bring it down to the station I got dressed up I jumped in the car I rode down to WBZ TV on Soldiers Field Road I got to the front door up to the security window a little slot opened up a hand reached out took the tape and I thought okay well that'll never be seen or heard from again and remember I had never seen what was on the tape I just thought whatever I've got the video portfolio and three weeks went by didn't hear a thing my mother said Joyce call them so I did and they said yeah we looked at your tape but we couldn't tell much from it would you come in for an audition meet us at the swan boats at 420 Thursday afternoon don't wear black and don't wear white and prepare an instant weekend so I didn't wear black I didn't wear white I wore red I thought oh I'll be memorable 420 swan boats I remember every detail and an instant weekend had no idea what that was but I watched the show and figured out it was just a little calendar of events I had to tell people about so I prepared it like a doctoral dissertation on index cards you know walking around the house memorizing this whole thing I showed up at the appointed time and place and you should have seen the women who showed up to audition for this job they were tall and blonde and they had their modeling portfolios with them and they were wearing stiletto heels and I'm thinking oh brother they're not looking for me I looked like you know a little school teacher with a Peter Pan collar and I thought but you know I have a good education and I can talk and maybe they'll hire me behind the scenes so we drew lots to see who would go first I was second and I noticed the first woman who walked up there was wearing all white and I thought you know they only gave us three directions this could be easier than I think so she got up there and she didn't know what to do with her hands so I thought oh remember that put your hands in your pockets when you get up there so you look cool come and collected I got up there I promptly got really nervous as soon as they put the microphone on me because of course there'd be a mic because of course there were cameras because this was a TV audition and I had my hands in my pockets which meant I couldn't refer to my index cards and then I was nervous so I forgot everything so my hands were going in and out of my pocket so I could remember and it was like hello I'm look at the card Joy School Haywick you know it was terrible and I thought oh I'm really blowing this and I finished very quickly and just threw the card away and started to run off and just then the producer Tom Houghton oh yeah jumped out of the truck came running over to me and said hey hey come back I think you've got something we're looking for and I said what amnesia he said no no just get rid of the card and just stand in front of the camera and just tell us about yourself we'll ask you some questions and they did and I talked and three weeks later I heard nothing and I called them again on my mother's direction and they said oh yes the producer wants to have lunch with you and I said oh okay so we had lunch and again you know we had an hour of talking about all kinds of things vacation and books and you know whatever and finally I said Mr. Houghton how will I know if I have the job and he said Joyce you have the job that's why we're having lunch I said oh nobody told me that's how I ended up on the sixth largest television market in the country the esteemed WBZ TV and was hired as an on-air tipster and also producing my own segments and it was instantly like one of the best jobs you could ever get I didn't have to work my way up it just kind of landed once I got to the station it turned into really the rest of my professional life I know exactly how you feel because most people have to start in small markets and I got out of college and through a series of circumstances I started at WBZ Radio and started to work for a character named Larry Glick somebody else named Jerry Williams and I don't know about you but I remember all of them I used to get up in the daytime and go to work and say I'm getting paid for this yeah you know I'm getting paid to call the Cisco Kid and put him on the air with Larry Glick or I'm getting paid I filled in for Larry Glick I'm getting paid to talk to Joe Garaziola I'm getting paid to talk to Mike Douglas not the actor but the talk show host I remember Mike Douglas and I had a I was having a ball and I could I all I kept thinking was this this can't be happening to me but you were also somebody who had to learn their craft on the air yes exactly right so in fact while it looks easy the job that I eventually took was really exciting but grueling in terms of the deadlines I mean though I started on Evening Magazine I hadn't had any experience on air and I had to learn my job really on air in front of everybody thank goodness it was in a sort of a lower profile situation I never hosted Evening Magazine but I would do a little short segment and it was on tape so I could re-tape if I needed to re-say and then I also learned how to produce for television so sit with an editor and choose the shots of the music and write the script but because I could write I had a spine off which to work I had a template in my head and then it was a matter of putting pictures to it but I love movies and I was used to looking at film from a certain kind of critical point of view so it all all of my disparate experiences and skill set had to come together in this platform in this new way and it was exactly the right thing for me because it was something new every day which I discovered I needed and liked which was different from teaching where you would have you know semesters long work you'd follow a book through day after day after day no in television it's fresh and new pretty much every day especially in news so I learned how to be on TV doing Evening Magazine for about two and a half years and I was also substituting for a lot of people Linda Harris when she was on the news so when she was on with Don Kent and oh gosh who else was she on with there was Don Kent and someone else whose name I'm just Jack Chase so I would fill in on the morning show sometimes I filled in for the noon show people are talking I filled in for Tom Bergeron on occasion I filled in for a lot of different people learning different formats one shot at a time and it took me about two and a half years and then the station offered me a job in news as the consumer reporter and I said well I could do that but I don't really care about that I care about the arts and culture so if you want to do that call me and they said wait what you're saying no this is a promotion and I said yeah well I already like what I'm doing and I've already had jobs I don't like and you got to know when to say no so that there's room to say yes when the right thing comes along and six months later they called me and said you know what we're going to do that we're going to take you up on that idea and we're going to launch a public service campaign called you got to have arts which is going to launch the whole beat and that became the first time in the country I believe that any reporter was assigned to the arts and entertainment beat in a regular way every single night on a regular newscast so that it was no longer just news sports and weather it was news sports weather and arts and entertainment and that was such a revolutionary idea and I think important idea arts and culture being an extraordinarily important and crucial part of any community and the good news that the New York Times actually picked up on it and did an editorial on how important this was and how revolutionary and praised WBC and this became the beginning of a an almost 30-year beat and it caught on at every other station in Boston so that at one time we had something like seven or eight reporters devoted to this job every night on the news not just when you know the pops are going to play on the esplanata the 4th of July but every night reporting on everything from the ballet to the opera to rock and roll to you know theater to music to everything keep in mind also at that time each television station had their own individual talk shows celebrities came to Boston like crazy yes and they had a format that I could put them on the air and I will say that since I've been off the air there've been many many fewer places and and every station's gotten rid of their arts and entertainment reporter this is terrible it's hard to find outlets for this information so I continue to do this work but in a much more fragmented landscape I am guests on the radio whenever people ask TV whenever there's a format for it and they need an expert on something or someone really big as diet or you know they need an obituary or some kind of retrospective on someone's career there are other sites on which my work appears I host and speak so the community has not let go of me which is really great and it's I think it's a sign of the hunger for this information to get out it isn't that it doesn't exist it needs a way to be broadcast whether in print online on the radio on television everywhere somewhere anywhere and you got to cover the Oscars oh I covered the Oscars the Emmys the Grammys I mean just I was on that red carpet for 25 years something like that 20 to 25 years and I talked to everybody yeah when I first came to BZ they were still affiliated with NBC the network that they started with and then they switched what was it easier to work with one network than the other were that network that whole thing that whole switch was one of the most cataclysmic seismic shifts in TV watching in Boston because channel four was always NBC and it was usually NBC all across the country and when you grow up with the stations like that in your head it's very hard to switch and it created huge chaos for the viewing audience and it was very difficult for BZ to avoid getting lost we at one point we I still say we because it's still I still identify with WBZ we changed the name of the station to drive home the point that we were still channel for there were about 10 months in there when we decided on the advice of consultants you know in these know nothing consultants that we should now call ourselves news for New England even though WBZ was a legendary iconic station and I use the word iconic very sparingly not like they use it now for everybody it it is and remains an iconic set of call letters that even if you didn't know anything else you'd say oh we're from four five seven no BZ we're from BZ oh you're from BZ they don't even it's just the two letters well these consultants decided no you're no longer going to identify yourself as BZ you're going to be called news for New England and I remember going into the news director's office saying this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard this is it sounds like a cable news outlet you no one knows what that is or who we are that we're the same and the news director insisted that it was a great idea and I said you know what I'm going to hang on to the old stationery and within 10 months we went back to being called WBZ TV now a CBS affiliate we both have celebrity stories I mean I remember standing in the lobby one day waiting for a cab running into Marlow Thomas oh yeah I remember another day when I was waiting I was in the lobby and I was able to go call my parents and hey say hey guess what I met beaver cleaver I shook hands with beaver cleaver or I talked to Ted couple this afternoon yeah or finding out that Vincent Price was here for the American Dairy Association and suddenly developing a thirst for milk oh that's so funny I have I think Vincent Price's death mask they they had his mask done I interviewed him on the set on live on four I interviewed Rosie O'Donnell I interviewed Roseanne when she first started out as a stand-up comedian housewife Ar set I talked to Isaac Stern on our set I talked to Jerry Seinfeld when he was doing stand-up at Catcher Rising Star in Harvard Square in a little comedy club I mean I talked to so many of these people on their way up when before fame hit one of my best stories is about Tina Turner Tina Turner first of Ike and Tina Turner then she left that very abusive relationship went out on her own and there was a question about whether or not she would make it and she really disappeared from view for a long time and then started to make a gradual comeback and started playing smaller clubs and she was playing in Harvard Square and I remember going to the news director that night and saying hey Tina Turner's in town and I'd love to go talk with her I mean my gosh remember her you know rolling on the river and she was so fabulous I think she'd be a great story they said really you think and I said I do I got a camera crew we interviewed her in her hotel room she sat there and she said to me Joyce I don't know what's coming but I've been chanting I've been doing this Buddhist chanting I'm playing these small clubs and I just know I'm gonna hit it big and we then I'm gonna say eight months to a year she came out with that extraordinary recording what's love got to do with it was a smash global superstar over almost overnight and we could never get another interview with her again another sit down but I remember rerunning when she was playing at Foxboro Stadium to you know tens of thousands of people this interview where she said I know it's coming and it's gonna be big and then cutting to her standing in front of this extraordinary global audience and then again I'm doing live aid I did live aid you know with like Mick Jagger and all these people I mean crazy and we kind of snuck onto the state we snuck backstage I just handed my camera crew you know some credentials and I picked up a clipboard and said oh yeah we're coming in and they said oh okay you just got to act like you know what you're doing and they just let you in this yeah incredible I remember one night when they were filming the Brinks job here in Boston oh yeah and we got Peter Falk on the air with Larry Glick oh yeah and there was nothing more exciting to me than listening to Philip Colombo talk to Larry Glick and he's and I'm saying there's hey man we got Colombo on the air he tried to tell you what side you should photograph him from him and all I talked to him and he was very persnickety about that but then we ended up having a great conversation oh yeah yeah yeah well he had a glass eye he did yeah and there's a great story about that that was a book written up by somebody about about him and he went to he went for an eye test and and he told him he only had one good eye and the doctors and the doctor said well do the best you can I never I never forgot that story but I'll always remember him talking to Larry Glick and that Colombo voice and I'm sitting at the end isn't as great we got Colombo on the air like it just one more question yeah one more thing served one more thing if you were doing a show today let's say you were back on busy TV because of the modern technology because of satellite because of video conferencing would it be harder to get guests in the studio or go to their hotel with a camera crew it doesn't matter to me I mean is it easier to get people to come in or to go to them it all depends you know on the on the person it depends on their circumstances but to celebrity what I'm leading up to is the celebrities come to Boston as much as they used to to plug stuff they you know I will I will say this that it's much more competitive because there are many more outlets on the other hand they're starting to figure out that people don't want these prefab interviews that get circulated to everybody so there has been a slight shift back to breaking up these tours and going to certain key cities again where you can actually sit down with local folks and talk with them so but but Boston is at somewhat of a of a disadvantage there because we don't have that many outlets in which to do it that get a big enough audience news shows would be the ideal place to do it but it's harder to book it because they don't have regular reporters who do it it's also entertainment exactly um but you know that that line obviously has always been a little bit blurry and now I mean I'm gonna go a little deep on you here I mean I see arts the arts and politics is being deeply involved with each other I mean really politics is where people express a voice about their lives and policy and the arts is exactly the same place where you express your voice in a point of view not about policy but to the culture so that we get to think about the big issues of our time and have some insight about them and access the truth about things and the truth is in really short supply these days it's hard to figure out what's real and what's fake and that has a lot to do with our politicians in office and it has a lot to do with technology because you can fake so many things now so it you know these things the arts and and politics are so connected that I would say it is to call artists uh just entertainment uh is to diminish them before we started this I was kidding you and talking to you about Cisco and Ebert and they used to have a Sunday morning show on bz tv and I found something on youtube with you and and Roger Ebert yes well I was lucky enough to be a guest host with Roger Ebert for on and off for about a year I was a fill-in guest host because uh gene siskel passed away from cancer and they were looking for his replacement I got a phone call one day out of the blue at my desk inviting me to sit with Roger and to see how that would go and it went great honor off for a year we were actually negotiating a contract came down to me in another person and I really didn't want to move to Chicago and suggested that I would be able to commute and but I still wanted to keep my job at bz and bz was all for it you know they they actually let me do a lot of outside things uh and gave me that time off to go do other things while still keeping my my beat going here I had a marvelous producer Marjorie Borco who I worked with for decades and he decided on the other person and subsequently down the road I found out that there was not on his part but that the production company wanted a man in that seat they didn't want a woman in that seat so you just never know how this is going to come up you know sexism in the job but Roger was very candid with me and said he would love to do this with me and I you know that that's how that went I considered this the high point of my professional life and Roger and I had actually known each other 10 or 15 years before that because while I was covering the Oscars I had this idea hey why don't we get Roger Ebert to talk with me about our picks and I remember everybody said how are you going to get Roger Ebert and I said well I'm going to call him up and I did and he said yes and again you know you never know unless you'd sort of go for it right yep I I was the one that said let's go to the Oscars they said the Oscars how are you going to get credentials to cover the Oscars I said well I'm going to I'm going to request them and I did and they said yes and then they started sending everybody to the Oscars so so you just got it you got to aim high and uh you know maybe if you're aiming for Mars you'll get to the moon do you still watch the Oscars like when they make I love the Oscars I love it every year and actually it's it's more fun now because well first of all I know what it's like to be on that carpet and it is exhausting and it's exciting and it's thrilling but you're running back and forth and you're trying to be on this deadline and you know it's really hard and you actually miss a lot of the ceremony because you're writing and trying to get the thing on the air so now after having had that incredible experience I love sitting at home and tweeting out my reactions to everything as I watch every minute every boring speech I was gonna say every gown on the red carpet every flub every this I I just love the whole thing and I always have from the time I was a child I feel like a member of the academy all right let's get serious okay you eventually got let go yes why first hired last fired although I technically wasn't fired but hey I was let go yes well it's that's the same I mean hey I got I got fired by the same radio station twice yeah so I but what happened and and what did it do to you mentally it was that's a great question Ken and almost nobody asked me about that and I think people are very you know careful about that this was 2008 it was right when the economy was collapsing and it was the same day that 30 people in our building at CBS got let go oh my god and this happened in every CBS station across the country the that day so I was part of a large purge and downsizing of CBS as the economy was collapsing as news networks everywhere local news stations and national news stations were feeling the crunch of all the other networks and cable television that was cutting into this pie you know of viewers our viewership was declining so they decided to not you know to not have special beats anything they could do to reduce the budget they did the irony for me was that my contract was still in effect and I ended up being paid for the next two to three years I got raises and I said I don't understand you know there it was just a way of them lowering their overhead and it was strictly an accounting position an accounting decision it was a business decision so I would say on the one hand I was mystified that I couldn't be of use in some way I remember my the first words out of my mouth were you mean I'm such a disadvantage that you'd rather pay me to not be on the air and they just started laughing they said no no this is just this is not us this is coming from higher up this is budgets this is money and I immediately knew that this had nothing to do with the quality of my work and that I shouldn't take it personally and honestly to be in this business you have to know you can't take it personally that business is business and that you are you and and you can never define yourself that way so I didn't let any road my confidence what I came to miss was my relationship with the audience and that platform which I have never been able to replicate and no one could ever replicate this again it just doesn't exist that job in that way doesn't exist and there there is not the same audience that there ever was when there were three stations there are now a thousand in three stations so there's never going to be that again I remember names like Dixie Watley oh yeah and Sarah Edwards oh we were all incredibly collegial and competitive but in a very collegial way is the best way I can put it I mean I wouldn't go hand the mystery I got for myself but none of us asked for exclusives on things that was something I firmly believed in I wanted the arts in our community to have as much exposure on every station that they could so I would never say hey if you talk to me you can't talk to anybody else and I actually I was pretty clear with everyone about that being the way I thought it should go and everyone kind of agreed at least on that beat we agreed I mean it was kind of like sports in a way you know you wouldn't have a team say oh if you talk to Lobel you can't talk to you know Lynch over a Channel 5 right now I mean these things should be covered by everybody so that's kind of how I felt about it though I would say I could have asked for that and would have gotten it but didn't believe that that's how that should go again on a serious note and I feel that I can ask you this because you have been so forthright and forthcoming in 2011 I had a major heart attack wow and only one percent of the people that have that kind of heart attack survive good for you kid my wife had not been there and had been in another part of the house I wouldn't be here right now and I'm asking you this because it was on the internet you are a cancer survivor yes not once not twice but three times can you believe it no either can I but were you ever afraid uh yeah there were days when I was afraid but I do not live in fear and I was predominantly not afraid I would say the cancer started I had two different types of cancer and they are unrelated to each other one is a skin cancer and it's a malignant melanoma and it's the very vicious aggressive tumor that was diagnosed probably about a week out from my wedding in 1979 so it was a very dramatic story and um and it was misdiagnosed I was misdiagnosed every single time so what I want to say to people is you need to challenge your doctors you need to stick close to your own body and pay attention to what you think your symptoms are and get what you feel is a satisfactory answer uh so I I happen to be watching tv one day and the Phil Donahue show was on and I and there was a woman out who said she had cancer of the colon and it all started with a mole on her leg and I looked down and there was a mole on my leg and it was a nude mole and um I had noticed it about a year before and never did anything about it but in 1979 we didn't really know about moles and how dangerous a mole could be and that's all it was I mean it didn't hurt it wasn't itchy not there was nothing else about it it just looked it suddenly appeared so I went to a dermatologist because it was on my skin and their skin doctors and he looked at it and he said ah it doesn't look like anything and I said well I'm getting married in about a week and I want you to do a biopsy and I knew that word and he said oh okay so I said you'll get the results in 10 days I said no no I'm getting married I want the results right away so I pushed and uh he said you'll have to carry it over to the lab yourself if you want to get these results right away so I did he popped it in a jar and I walked through the Chestnut Hill Medical Center and I brought it to the lab and about two days later I was working at evening magazine and they called me a semi-hysterical urgently saying you need to check yourself into a hospital you've got malignant melanoma we're 99 percent sure there's going to be brain scans liver scans etc I mean it was intense and I said I'm getting married they said no you're canceling the wedding you're going into the hospital and I was what I didn't they didn't even use the word cancer and I finally said are you telling me I have some kind of cancer because they use the word malignant and they said yes that's exactly what we're telling you so I remember being floored and not even actually being able to finish the conversation Robin Young picked up the phone and finished the conversation and I went home and started packing for the hospital but I ended up getting a second opinion and it was because I was getting married at a double wedding with my brother and his wife to be happened to be the chief radiation therapist at University Hospital and she said Joyce you have to get a second opinion and I said well why what's the point I mean is there going to be a disagreement about whether or not this is cancer I mean cancer is cancer is cancer right she said get a second opinion and I got a second opinion the very next morning from a person whose specialty was malignant melanoma he was not a dermatologist he was a surgical oncologist with a specialty in melanoma and he said to me yes this is melanoma vicious aggressive tumor spreads rapidly to the brain the liver he said but we may have caught this in time but it's got to come off right now and can you handle a local anesthetic I said you bet and they wheeled me in and they took it off with 17 stitches in my leg and I limped down the aisle and he handed me a staple remover or what looked like that that my so that my husband could remove these stitches while we were on our honeymoon in Barcelona and he did and it was romantic and and it was yeah and 95 percent chance of complete recovery 10 years later I am in my room doing a yoga workout and I finished the workout and felt cold and realized oh I must have forgotten to put the heat on and in fact I checked the thermostat the heat was on it was me who was cold and within five minutes was racked with uh chills fever and abdominal pain got to a hospital they checked me in they diagnosed me as having an infection and gave me antibiotics and released me with a clean bill of hell five days later but I knew I wasn't well and I could tell and I still felt swollen I still felt not completely up to speed energy wise and I remember asking a good friend of mine to look at me and say does it do I look normal don't I look a little swollen she said yeah that's not normal for you and it's easy to forget what's normal so again I challenged I got a second opinion I got checked into another hospital they said yeah it's your appendix and it's got to come right out and they opened me up and they were wrong again it was ovarian cancer and it was a ruptured tumor and they removed it and they said we're not going to remove everything have your family come back in when you're done and we'll take out the rest and that decision almost cost me my life because about a year and a half later I was on an airplane headed for Africa Nairobi my husband and I are going on a safari vacation and as we're coming in for a landing to begin the trip I'm racked with abdominal pain and I'm thinking is this a tumor is this the flu is this now my appendix you know what is this do I turn around and go home do I check myself into a hospital in Nairobi no good options here I hold up in my hotel for about two or three days I seem to feel better well enough to go on the go on the safari we hiked into the Varunga mountains into the jungle we met the mountain gorillas it was unbelievable I came home went to the doctor they set up pancreatitis yeah misdiagnosed again I'm in the hospital five days over the fourth of July didn't get to cover that year went home I heard from my doctors about two weeks later and they said you know a blood test of years came back doesn't look good you think you've got ovarian cancer and I said you're kidding you told me this was behind me they said no we got to schedule you for surgery and I didn't make it they didn't schedule it soon enough I was rushed to the hospital the night before they opened me up full-blown ruptured tumor that had now ruptured three times and was everywhere so I was in serious trouble and they removed everything and the next five days were the scariest days of my life because they had to wait for all the results to come back and what the prognosis would be and they got back to me and they said yeah you're you're stage two to A or B something like that and chemotherapy is required and we think you may be past this but we're just not sure we're just going to have to watch you and the staging was pretty good given what I'd been through there are four stages of that disease and I was to A or B so I did the chemo and six months later I didn't lose my hair and I asked them to go in and do a second look surgery and they said no what's the point if it's over if we got it we got it and if we didn't there's nothing more we can do for you and I said well I'd like to know if it's there and if the chemo worked and I got all my doctors together and they operated on me and I was got a clean bill of health they found no trace of any cancer and that chem was 30 years ago wow so they said and doctors continue to tell me that you can really count on the fingers of one hand how many people fall into this category so I am enormously grateful I've learned a tremendous amount and I've tried to pass along to whoever I talk to and thank you for giving me this platform once again what I learned about one's health you have to pay attention to your body you have to find doctors who will hear you you have to challenge them when you feel that you may be right and they may be wrong you must find a doctor who can really hear you that relationship is an incredibly healing relationship and don't be afraid to ask the right questions and to insist until you get a definitive answer and if somebody says oh let's watch that for six months and then come back don't walk out of that office run out of that office do you get somebody to do a biopsy do a test give go deeper find it out that's that's what I advise you live in your body and you know it better than anyone else you are you have a family you are happily married yes Andrew I believe Andrew Cohen architect extraordinaire oh I have to remember that yes and you have you have a daughter a daughter Annalise Cohen who's magnificent she's 24 years old and we are just oh so thrilled to have her she's the center of our lives two more questions yes you had a recent spot that has been on WBZ TV a reunion yes with with Jack Liz Bob Bruce and me yeah yeah and and also on a hot day like this if somebody we're going to go to a movie what would you recommend oh my gosh you know what I'm so glad you asked me I think it's been I thought you would be oh dismal summer for movies oh hi I'm so bored with all of these films I mean an ocean's eight in a Jurassic park you know 45 and you know and they're all just fine entertaining films not all of them but Jurassic Jurassic world is fine it's very entertaining it's not the most brilliant film there ever was but it's great oceans eight you know it's fun to see the women do what the men had been doing and it's fine but I think there are a lot of holes in that perfect robbery so you know whatever but it's a it's an all-star cast led by Sandra Bullock and a few other folks and you know it's yeah it's fine light entertainment the best film out there right now is the film that's a documentary about Mr. Rogers I heard about this oh my gosh it is what everyone needs in their life and what we all need now and I did not grow up as a Mr. Rogers kid I didn't watch him when I was a child he wasn't on a lot of the time then when I got older I thought he was a little odd I didn't you know but now as I'm discovering my own inner child you know in herself a man who understood what we all need which is to be loved and accepted where we are you watch this documentary and you see how he persuaded some of the hard-boiled politicians that he had to address before congress when he was asking for more money to fund PBS how they were ready to dismiss all of them and they did until Mr. Rogers sat down and spoke in the most gentle heartfelt way about what we need and they gave them the funding I couldn't believe my eyes and what how children responded to him and how this man was able to stay so close how all of us are lovable as we are which isn't to say we don't have to work hard to achieve something which isn't to say that we don't have to focus and give it our best shot but that as we come into the world how we are is good enough and lovable and that when a person accepts you that way this is real love and that message is so crucial now I want Donald Trump to watch this documentary and tell me what he thinks yeah I'm sure he and Stormy Daniels could go together have a swell time at the fair but but tell me a little more about this spot was Jack and Vegas did they get him to come to Boston or is he in Vegas now? Jack is based elsewhere he lives in Las Vegas with his family an extended family and Liz obviously is a minister in the community and has a whole second career professionalism and Bob is still here and does he's doing a podcast as far as I know not pod but podcast and is a guest on different shows I still he was on this one that's right yes he was yes and Bruce is retired and still has a house here in the burbs and has a summer home someplace else so we're all kind of still around but Jack did fly in and we all reunited for the 70th anniversary of WBC and I got to say it was both surreal and incredibly natural to be on that set again all of the chemistry that we had as a team kicked right back in you couldn't find five more different people it isn't like we all socialized outside the studio but when we hit that set there was a kind of gal chemical reaction that just worked and it was great and we all felt it again and you could see it I got to tell you I I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed this interview thank you so much you can you are one of the most dynamic and enthusiastic people that I have ever met in my entire life oh I'm so glad I'm so glad I still feel a great lust for life and and excitement and experiences and I'm grateful for every single day minute well Joyce I can't thank you enough thank you for this platform Ken thank you my pleasure that'll do it for this edition of city talk so long everybody