A Couple of News Junkies

When it comes to married couples whose jobs sometimes put them at odds, there’s the husband-wife combo of U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin and CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour; political consultants James Carville, Democrat, and Mary Matalin, Republican; and Sunday morning TV talk pundits Cokie Roberts of ABC’s “This Week� and round-table regular Steve Roberts of CNN’s “Late Edition.�

And on Southland radio, you can hear Carol Ramos, the 5-9 a.m. morning-drive news anchor on KABC-AM (790), or punch the dial and tune in her husband, Dick Helton, the 5 a.m.-1 p.m. general assignment reporter and substitute anchor on KNX-AM (1070). For three days this week, he filled in for vacationing afternoon drive anchor Dave Zorn.

Rather than competitors, Ramos and Helton, who have been married for nearly two years, see each other as a sort of synergistic teammate--with the advantage of filling them in on what’s happening, or rumored to be happening, at the other’s station before most of their colleagues. At the same time, they know how to keep confidences.

“It’s just fun to be out and hear people in the business kibitzing about what’s going on when I actually know . . . “ Helton said, grinning at Ramos across the dining table in their West Hollywood condo, which they share with two cats.

After they leave for their respective stations at 4:20 a.m.--he in his Jeep Cherokee, she in her Mazda Miata--Helton will check in with Ramos several times a morning, sometimes just to tell her a good kicker line with which he ended a story. And does she ever borrow a line of his?

Ramos threw her questioner a sour, how-could-you look. “No,� she replied firmly, “that I don’t do.� She paused. “I’ll laugh or I’ll go, ‘That’s sick,’ � she said, throwing her husband a grin, “but I never use his lines.�

And at night, they watch the news shows together. “We’re news junkies,� Helton said, adding: “When we first started cooking with each other, in terms of the relationship developing, we enjoyed the fact that we could be sitting around a dinner table [and] talking about what went on that day, and have this sort of intelligent conversation about world events.�

“A lot of people in this business say that it’s a welcome relief to be married to someone who isn’t in the business,� Ramos said, “because that way you don’t have to talk about work and talk about stories. But in both of our cases, we found that that’s what was missing from our lives in the past--the fact that we didn’t have somebody to bounce things off.�

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On KABC since 1997, Ramos is the rather calming “news-personality� sidekick of modulated voice and mature presence to the current hyper-energetic host Joe Crummey. Having done such stints with Ken Minyard and Peter Tilden and then with temporary host Marc (“Mr. KABC�) Germaine, she’ll hold a similar position with John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, whose “John and Ken Morning Show� debuts July 1. She has not yet met them.

“I’ve been asked by a lot of people, ‘Aren’t you apprehensive?’ No, because I’ve been in the business for 20 years, and I’ve worked well with everybody. If there’s one thing that I am, [it] is a professional, and I pride myself on what I do, and I do it well.�

Ramos, 41, a city kid from Brooklyn, whose parents were born in Puerto Rico, and Helton, 55, a farm boy from southern Illinois, met at CBS news station WBBM-AM in Chicago in 1986. Each was married to someone else. From 1991 to 1994, they were afternoon-drive co-anchors--good newsroom buddies but hardly social outside the office. Indeed, they didn’t know each other’s marriages were in trouble or that something could spark between them until she moved out here to become a morning-drive anchor at KFWB-AM (980).

She arrived on June 17, 1994, the day of O.J. Simpson’s Bronco chase. She immediately phoned Helton back at the anchor desk in Chicago to tell him what was happening. He already knew. They started talking regularly.

During one of their long-distance chats, Helton said, he told Ramos he’d like to “come out and take a look around. So I came out and, gosh, it was one of those sort of magical things, like, ‘Wow, where have you been all my life? Why didn’t I know this before?’ �

Helton, who has two grown children from his first marriage, got divorced in 1995; Ramos, a year later. They were married on Sept. 6, 1997, while he was still working for WBBM. After several months of a commuter marriage, Helton began freelancing at KNX and finally landed a full-time slot last June.

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Ramos grew up speaking Spanish first, and didn’t learn English until just before kindergarten. Early on, she had an interest in broadcast journalism, which got firmed up when she met Geraldo Rivera, her hero then, outside WABC-TV studios in New York at age 13. “My aunt went up to him, grabbed him by the arm. ‘This is my niece. She wants to be a reporter. She thinks the world of you.’ � After giving them a tour of the station, Ramos recalled, “he got down on one knee, and he kissed my hand, and said, ‘You can be anything you want to be.’ �

After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Georgia in 1979, Ramos landed on CBS’ WOSO, an English-language radio station in San Juan. Later, after a stint outside Evansville, Ind., she arrived in Chicago as a TV reporter for Spanish-language station WCIU. In 1986, she was interviewed by NBC News. Because of her reporting skills and Spanish fluency, NBC wanted to hire her to cover Central America. Only one problem: The executive who interviewed her asked that the blond and blue-eyed Ramos dye her hair black. To look more convincing as a Latina, he said.

“I said, ‘I don’t need to convince anybody who I am,’ � she told him. “ ‘And if you don’t like the package, I guess you won’t get the reporter.’ It was important to me. Watch Telemundo or Univision: We come in all sizes and shapes and colors. That was a rude awakening for me, and one of the reasons I became more firmly entrenched in radio. Next day I was on the phone with the news director at WBBM.�

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Helton, who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1966 and had been with WBBM for 29 years, never did go into television. Having covered everything from the Chicago Seven there to the Oscars here, he’s a born and bred “radio guy� who used to hug his Hopalong Cassidy radio to his ear at night, listening to CBS’ “Music ‘Til Dawn.�

“I think radio provides one with more freedom. When I’m out [on the streets], I’m it. I make my own decisions about what sound bites are going to go into the story.�

Besides, he said with a broad grin, touching the top of a bald head, “I have radio hair.�

Do they ever see themselves working together again? Perhaps. Almost in unison, they say that someday, somewhere, they’d make a fine husband-wife talk-show duo.