My second contract at WLTX was ending, which made it the perfect time to see what else was out there. This was not a decision I took lightly. I prayed and prayed over what I should do. Proverbs 3:5–6 promises that God will direct my path if I trust in Him with all of my heart and lean not on my own understanding. That was my prayer throughout this time. I told God that I did not want Ainsley’s way, but HIS way. I needed Him to direct me where He wanted me to be. The more I prayed this prayer, the more I felt my heart being drawn to Texas. I’d fallen in love with the state when I visited Dallas years before. I also liked the fact that it was westward. Texans are southwesterners. They are good people. They love God and America. I thought Texas would be a good place for a South Carolina girl to work before making the transition to either California or New York.
My agent at the time sent my tapes to multiple markets, including San Antonio, Texas. Not long after, I had offers from the latter as well as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas. I ruled out Chattanooga after speaking to the news director on the phone and talking to different people who worked there. The station did not seem to be a good fit for me at the time. I flew out to Little Rock for a visit, and to be honest, I was not enthused at first. But, when I arrived I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked the city, and the news director couldn’t have been nicer. However, I was looking to step out of the box and find a new challenge and I felt like Little Rock would be more of the same. The news director wanted me to anchor the five o’clock newscast then eventually move up to be the main anchor (or so he said).
As a side-note, I have learned in this business that promises need to be in writing. And if they can’t put it in writing when you sign your contract, there is a strong chance the promises will be broken. When I discussed potential jobs with my family, my parents always asked, “Did you get that in writing?” They had my best interest in mind. When I signed my first contract for my first job, my dad read it and said, “Ains, they own you.” But, in my heart of hearts, I knew who owned me: God. He gave me confirmation after confirmation that He “had this” and I didn’t need to worry. I didn’t need any promises in writing. I knew God would get me where He wanted me to be using the tools He gave me: a positive attitude, a passion for my profession, a love for my bosses, and an excitement in being the “yes girl.” I knew if I said yes to every opportunity, I would be considered a hard worker and an employee who was easy to work with. I prided myself on rarely ending up in the boss’s office. I rarely called for a meeting (out of consideration for them) and always reminded myself that less is more. That is, the less I bugged and nagged my bosses about a better position, the more they would notice me.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a place for telling the bosses what you want. If you want a raise, ask for it. In October 2017, I interviewed Ivana Trump, President Trump’s first wife. I found her to be an amazing mother and a strong woman. During our interview she told me the key to keeping her children out of trouble as they were growing up was to keep them busy. Get them involved in every sport and after-school classes. And then, when they are teenagers, make them work and pay them for what they do. She said her son Donald Trump Jr. was working every day and complained about his salary over and over again. When he finally asked his mom for a raise, she didn’t hesitate. They negotiated a higher salary. He then said, “Mom, why didn’t you give me this earlier when I was complaining?” She said, “Because, son, you never asked.” That is one of the best lessons you can learn for the workplace. If you go to the boss’s office, tell her (or him) what you want. She (or he) can’t read your mind. But—and this is crucial—always remember to be thankful for the blessings you have and make sure the boss knows how grateful you are.
My freshman year, my college roommate’s dad worked for Disney World, and I asked her what it was like. She said, “My father refuses to say anything negative about the company. He says nothing but praises because he appreciates Disney for putting food on our table every day.” That is the attitude I wanted to adopt when I got my first “real” job. That is why I decided to visit Little Rock with a positive outlook. I wasn’t too excited about taking a job there because it seemed like a horizontal move. I was already in a similar city. But it helped that the news director was offering more money than the station in Columbia. Even so, my expectations were low. What I discovered surprised me. Little Rock is such a wonderful, southern city. My potential news director took me to the best-known steak restaurant downtown and I had the best steak I had ever had. As a bonus, there was a live jazz band playing just outside the front doors for a public celebration. The downtown had a great vibe to it. By the time I flew back to Columbia I could see myself living in Little Rock. I thought I might have found my next job.
Then I flew to San Antonio.
Kurt Davis, the news director at KENS 5, met me at the airport. I went dressed for success. I wore a business suit on the plane and brought high heels (to throw on when we landed). I wanted to present the image of a serious newswoman. As the old adage says, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” When I walked off the plane, ready to go, Kurt was there to greet me. He was casual, wearing jeans, and said, “We’re going to dinner.” I felt completely overdressed and uncomfortable. I decided in that moment to be myself and ask Kurt an honest question. “Do you mind if I zip into the ladies’ room and change into some jeans too?”
“No, not at all,” Kurt said. He loves that story and reminds me of it to this day. Later he told me that right then he knew he’d found his anchor.
Kurt took me to an Italian restaurant. As we talked about the job I noticed an Englebert Humperdinck song playing in the background. The song took me right back to my childhood. My grandparents (on my dad’s side) loved his music. When I was a little girl they gave me a record player and a bunch of their old records. I played their old Englebert Humperdinck albums over and over. I enjoyed listening to his music when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep. Being up at night when everyone was sleeping was something I enjoyed (to this day I love “Ainsley Time”—time alone to just watch TV, read my Bible, write letters, or organize my closet). At the time I would listen to my music and feel like I had the house to myself. Back then, Ainsley Time was finishing an art project, spending hours flipping through fashion magazines, cleaning out drawers in my bedroom, or rearranging the furniture. So, when I happened to hear an Englebert Humperdinck song playing at this Italian restaurant, it took me back to a happy time. I felt like it was a small nudge from above telling me, “This is where you need to be.” Now, I obviously didn’t make my decision based purely on what song happened to be playing while I was eating dinner with the news director from a potential employer. Many other factors came into play. However, hearing this song in this setting immediately put me at ease. It made San Antonio seem a little more like home even though I’d only been there a few hours. I’ve found that God uses little things like this to reassure us that we are on the path He’s laying out for us.
By the time I left San Antonio, I knew I was going to accept this job offer. My agent negotiated a contract for me that doubled what I was making at WLTX. The contract was for three years but we inserted a clause allowing me to leave after two if I got a job offer in a top-ten media market or a national news outlet or in Phoenix. The top-ten media markets include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth, the San Francisco Bay area, Washington, D.C., Houston, Boston, and Atlanta. While Phoenix is just outside that list, I included it because my grandmother Mimi loved the area and I was intrigued.
The bosses agreed to the opt-out clause. We had a deal in place. I wanted to always be aligned with God’s will, but in my heart of hearts I didn’t think I would stay in San Antonio forever. I wanted to end up in a bigger market.
Now came the hard part: telling my bosses at WLTX and saying good-bye to Curtis, my co-anchor, and all the friends I had made working there. Larry Audas was no longer the news director. He was s
till in the Gannett family, but he was moving up the ladder and taking advantage of new opportunities. Larry had done so much for me. He hired me right out of college. He believed in me and took a chance. Then, years later, he made me the morning and noon anchor, which helped prepare me for where I am today. God used WLTX as the foundation of my career.
When I told the bosses I was leaving they said, “What can we do to convince you to stay? Can we match the salary? We just don’t want you to leave.”
I was flattered and thankful, but I knew I needed a new challenge and I could find it in Texas.
EXACTLY FIVE YEARS after I started at WLTX I packed up all my belongings and moved twelve hundred miles west to San Antonio. In January 2005 I became the new morning and midday anchor at the CBS affiliate KENS 5. Four months later, Kevin and I got married back home in Columbia. The wedding took place at the First Presbyterian Church and the reception was close by at the governor’s mansion. Because of the location, Governor Mark Sanford, whose campaign I had covered, was invited, but was unable to attend. Indeed, rather than the governor, it was the state police who showed up. They went straight to my father and informed him that they were going to shut the entire proceedings down because the music was too loud and a state ordinance required that all music be turned off at 10 P.M.
At first my father politely dismissed them because we had gotten special permission to play the music longer than the ordinance allowed from the Columbia police chief, who was there celebrating with us. Clearly, however, the governor and state law enforcement division carry more clout than the local police department. The state police threatened to arrest my father if he didn’t comply. This time my dad listened. The music stopped and the reception ended earlier than any of us had planned . . . not unlike the marriage, unfortunately.
I continued to pray for God’s will and San Antonio was where He called us. Kevin’s and my first big decision involved buying a house. My mother always repeated the old real estate adage “location, location, location.” She told me to buy the smallest house, or the most affordable house, in the nicest neighborhood. That’s where we started looking. We toured homes in two historic, beautiful neighborhoods close to downtown and the famous River Walk. There wasn’t much available in our price range. The only house that was a possibility was not in good shape. The building inspector found cracks in the foundation and other problems.
Since we couldn’t find a house that fit us and our price range in the historic neighborhoods, we looked at a neighborhood called Stone Oak. It was on the northern side of San Antonio, where my boss, Kurt Davis, and his family lived. Our real estate agent showed us a brand-new home with three bedrooms, an office, and an open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen. The house also had a backyard for our dogs and all of the landscaping (including flowers) was taken care of by the homeowners’ association. As we looked at the house the real estate agent added, “The neighborhood is called Stone Oak because all of the houses here are built on stone.” My mind immediately went to Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, where He says the wise man builds his house on a rock but a foolish man builds his house on sand. That settled it. The house was beautiful. No one had ever lived in it, which fit into my basic neat-freak nature. And it reminded me that for our home to last, we had to build it on the Rock, which is Jesus. We bought it and soon made it our home. Right after we moved in I took a rock out of the front yard and had Matthew 7:24 inscribed on it: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” We kept the rock in our house as a reminder of the true foundation on which a home must be built.
Working at KENS was a very different experience from WLTX because I was a different person. At my first job everything was brand-new, so expectations upon me were low. San Antonio was different, though. Here I came in as a young, but fairly seasoned anchor who’d left a top-rated show, which meant I had to be solid from the start. It helped that I sounded much more polished, the bosses at my South Carolina station having arranged for me to take voice lessons to help with my pronunciation and tone. When I worked in Columbia I sounded like everyone else because I was a native. But if I wanted to rise in my profession I needed to pronounce pen as pen not pin. And the number ten is not pronounced tin like the material once used to make cans. While you can never take all the southern out of a southern girl like me (thank goodness), I needed to learn to speak “properly” if I wanted to communicate with people outside of South Carolina.
Moving to Texas also meant leaving my family, but Kurt Davis, my new boss, made Kevin and me feel connected. On one of our early house-hunting trips, before I started the job, he took us to a Spurs game. That alone would have been amazing, but Kurt surprised us with court-side seats. KENS 5 was one of the team’s biggest sponsors. The station had those two seats and a box for every game. One of the players on the opposing team had gone to high school with Kevin, and in the middle of the game, as the players ran past us, Kevin yelled out the name of his old teammate, who turned to us and said hey. We were beyond excited about the opportunity to move to San Antonio, and Kurt was smart to entice us as he had. He and the station manager, Bob McGann, were always so good about including us in life beyond the station. They took us to countless Spurs games, invited Kevin to play golf at some of the most exclusive clubs in the city, and treated us like family. We were always invited to their Christmas parties and to events like Tux and Tennies, a big fund-raiser hosted by the Spurs where the men wear tuxedos with tennis shoes and the women wear long dresses with tennis shoes. Someone from each table (KENS 5 always purchased a table) would go up onstage, reach their hand into a bowl, and draw a number. The Spurs player that wore that jersey number would come sit at your table and eat dinner with your group. We drew Manu Ginóbili. He was one of the best players on the team. He was also very cordial and polite, a perfect gentleman.
Professionally, KENS was good for me. Our morning and noon shows’ ratings were rising, thanks be to God. I transferred my membership in the Junior League from Columbia to San Antonio and finished my provisional year. The Junior League is a service organization for women and was a wonderful way to meet others who had a heart for helping in the community. My mother and sister were members and I too wanted to be a part. I instantly met my closest friends in the organization, and as most wives do, we connected our husbands. Kevin and I started spending a lot of time with those other couples and became fast friends.
One of my friends, Stephanie Green, told me about her church, Oak Hills. Kevin and I started visiting and fell in love with the preaching and music. The pastor, Max Lucado, is a best-selling Christian author and a wonderful teacher. Ironically, at the time he was a regular guest on Fox & Friends. This was well before I got a job in New York and a decade before I joined Fox & Friends. Today, when he comes on the show I am the one conducting the interview. That is wild to me!
Oak Hills was a wonderful church. It didn’t have stained-glass windows or a long center aisle. Instead the facility was large and quite casual—there were no church pews, only folding chairs—but none of that mattered. Most important, I was “fed” there. The format was easy—we’d sing a few songs, listen to a sermon, and then have one more song. The contemporary music moved me, but Max’s teachings were always Biblical and his lessons made me a better person. Having read many of his books, I liked his beliefs as well as his emphasis on family. Since it was such a large church, it offered Bible studies for all ages. Stephanie and I signed up for one together and met some wonderful Christian women. We prayed for each other, shared some of our deepest desires, discussed our unanswered prayers, and prayed for our city and country. We genuinely wanted to make this world a better place.
At work, I quickly settled in as well. My co-anchor, who has since passed away, was a strong but lovable man. He loved his children and talked fondly of his ex-wife (who used to be his morning-show cohost). They would take family trips together. I remember how proud he was to ta
ke all five of them (they had three children together) to Hawaii. I knew he was in a position to help and teach me, too, so I was constantly asking him questions about his life, living in San Antonio, the culture and how to even pronounce street names we had to talk about in the news. My goal was to immerse myself in the city and learn as much as I could, but more than that, I wanted him to respect me and know I was making an effort. The ratings continued to go up and eventually we became the number one morning show in San Antonio.
It was easy to enjoy life in San Antonio, and I was comfortable there from the start. The city and the job felt like the perfect fit. I loved my new house, my boss was great, my co-anchor and I worked well together, and Kevin and I had a fantastic circle of friends. San Antonio quickly became our home, and all in all, this could have been the end of my journey. But I knew my contract opened the door for me to leave after two years and my agent would be shopping me around. As that date drew closer I prayed for God’s direction and wondered what He might have in store for me. I continued to pray for His will and had an open mind. Of course, a top-ten market would be a dream. As it turned out, God had something even bigger in mind.
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Fox News Comes Calling
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
—PSALM 37:4
THE DAY BEFORE I turned thirty I was sitting on my back porch talking to my mother-in-law on the phone while my dogs, Sassy and Saks, chased each other around the yard. The call waiting beeped. I checked the caller ID then said to my mother-in-law, “I gotta go! This is my agent.” She said something like, “Oh, wow, let me know what he says,” then hung up.
I switched the line over and said, “Hello,” to my agent, trying to sound calm.
The Light Within Me Page 8