Scooped on the Poop
by Ruth Ann Harnisch on 04/15/10 at 11:44 am
Day 104
Oprah Winfrey was living with John Tesh?
Man, I thought I was a reporter. Here I was working in the same newsroom, desks right next to each other, and I had no clue that Oprah and Tesh were an item until the details of Kitty Kelley’s new book started leaking.
So now I know that I was oblivious to the hot news happening right in front of me.
HOW MANY OF THE REST OF YOU KNEW? I’m talking to YOU, veterans of WTVF-TV (CBS) and WSM-TV (NBC). Oprah worked at Channel 5 and Tesh worked at Channel 4. Among all of us reporters, including Greg Bailey and Diane Bartley who covered the TV beat for the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Tennessean, didn’t ANYBODY know? (And what else do you know that you haven’t told all these years?)
The lesson for me today: I can always be surprised by new information, and that information can give me a totally different perspective.
2 Comments
Pat Nolan
Apr 15th, 2010
Hi, Ruthie!
I’ ve had many of the same thoughts as you (maybe it’s because we shared a desk in the Channel 5 newsroom back then
. How could we be so close to something, yet be so clueless?
I haven’t heard from anyone who says they knew about it back then, and that makes me a bit skeptical. Sure being in an interracial relationship would have been tough to be public about in any way in the mid-1970s. But, you know, they would have taken much more grief in the newsrooms (and from their corporate bosses) for dating or “sleeping with the enemy” at their rival station, than for anyone’s color of skin.
So did it happen? Tesh now says they “dated” and still remains friends. Oprah admits to one dinner date. Was it more than that? It appears the only people who know for sure aren’t saying any more (and who can blame them).
If anyone else from those days at Channel 4 or 5 or THE BANNER or TENNESSEAN have any late breaking news (about 35 years late) on this topic, I hope they’ll share. But maybe this is all the imagination or revenge of a former Tesh lover or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it will remain one of life’s unsolved mysteries, forever making us wonder what else we didn’t know about way back when (or today)?
Pat
Dolly M. Garlo
Apr 18th, 2010
Your post actually makes me feel better – always the last to know almost anything that makes for good gossip! I guess that's okay, mostly not my thing, but makes me feel kinds of out of touch sometimes …!
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