Kathleen Marple Kalb – Anchor, Author, Mom – Not in That Order!
Despite the popularity of podcasts, streaming services, and network and cable news, when New Yorkers want to know what’s happening in the city, they turn to all news radio. And since WCBS 88 shut down in August to become ESPN New York, 1010 WINS is the go-to source for news in the Big Apple. The voices on that outlet are as familiar to the audience as well-trusted relatives and friends. And among the WINS anchors, Kathleen Marple Kalb stands out for her warm radio voice, her well written reports, and for the signature way she announces her name – Kathleen Marple KALB.
Besides being one of 1010 WINS anchors, Kathleen is also a mystery writer, having penned more than eight novels with three more coming in 2025, and three more in 2026, drawing on her experiences as a radio anchor, mom to a teenager, and her love of history, particularly the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “Monday through Friday, I’m a suburban mom,” she said, during an interview from her Connecticut home. “I get up at 5:30, I walk, I take my son to school. It’s at the high school. Oh, my god, he’s a high schooler! He’s 14 and he’s taller than me, and I am not a small woman. So, wow!” (Kathleen is six feet tall.) During the school day, Kathleen has time to work on her books until she picks up her son at school.
On Friday night, Kathleen’s weekend at 1010 WINS begins. “I leave the house at 10:30 p.m., get to the New Haven train station, take the last train out, and arrive in New York City about two hours later,” she said. “I’m at my desk and at the radio station at 2 a.m. and work from 2 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.” After finishing her shift, she walks to Grand Central from the 1010 WINS office in Hudson Square. “I take the train, get home around 3:15 p.m., and do it all again on Sunday.” Laughing, she added: “So you can see why I tell people to stay away from me on Mondays, because I’m not impaired, I’m really not drunk, I’m just tired.”
While her shift begins at 3:30 a.m., she needs to be in place an hour beforehand to begin writing copy. “The great thing that has really helped me as a fiction writer is that I’m a long time radio news writer,” she said. “There’s a lot of crossover in terms of telling a good story and the opening line.” Kathleen’s mysteries are categorized as “cozies.” “My characters take on very serious, important issues,” she explained. ”What they don’t do is pick up body parts and blood from the floor. I write lighter stuff because a lot of what we do in the newsroom is so damn serious. I mean, I had to go on the air this weekend and talk about memorial services for a four year old boy who starved to death, for God’s sake.” (The death of four year old Jahmeik Modlin, whose parents are facing criminal charges after he died of malnutrition on October 14, has traumatized the city.)
“There’s no way I want to go writing about something like that on my own time for fun,” she continued. “There’s nothing elevating there. I look for things that are funny and goofy and stupid to write about. I am a huge aficionado of the stupid criminal story.”
Kathleen grew up in western Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where she received a Phi Beta Kappa key. Majoring in interpersonal communications and history, she thought she would be either a lawyer or history professor. Because she had worked for the university’s radio station, she landed a job as a writer at Pittsburgh’s KDKA Radio, working with the legendary Dave James. (With her typical dry humor, on her website she says she never wore her Phi Beta Kappa key again after her first day at KDKA when she accidentally hung up on a U.S. Senator.) She received word that she had been selected for an assistantship program at William and Mary, but knew that she wanted to make a career in radio.
Her mother, she said, never forgave her. “Mom was the first person in the family to have a college degree and the idea of her daughter having a shot at an advanced degree was a big deal,” she said. “When I told her I had turned down the assistantship to work in radio, she was furious! She mostly forgave me about ten years later when she went to a career day in Norwalk and saw the kind of reaction that people had to the work that we do.”
Although Kathleen had a writing job at KDKA, her goal was to be on the air. “One day I’m standing behind Dave James, listening to him read my copy, and I realized that A, I wanted to do that, and B, I might be able to do it as well as Dave,” she said. It was a time, however, when few women worked their way up from the writing desk. “I had to go to Vermont and learn the craft of being an on air person,” she said. (One of her mystery series, written under the pseudonym Nikki Knight, draws heavily from her experiences at that Vermont station.) Kathleen never doubted that she would make it in radio, but used her time in Vermont to sharpen her skills.
She noted that her husband, who trains people for TV jobs, stresses that’s it’s better to make big mistakes in a small market, rather than on the New York stage where recovery might be more difficult. While Kathleen has the perfect voice for radio, she had to work on her delivery. “I didn’t have control over my volume until I was in my 30s,” she said. “You could hear me everywhere because [my voice] is a big instrument. I had to learn to talk slower because I talk very, very quickly, especially when I’m interested in something or it’s exciting or it’s a moment, it’s a new story.” She added: “I like to say that I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, but I learned how to be an adult in Vermont.”
Despite all the other news outlets competing for people’s time, Kathleen believes all news radio is still vital. “I think people need local,” she said. “It’s extremely important on an ordinary day with traffic and weather and that kind of thing. It’s life or death in a weather situation or a disaster or any of the things that can happen. You have to have a local radio station. You have to have people you can trust to deliver information. `Get out of the way of the semi truck on the GWB. There’s a chemical leak in your neighborhood. Get out, a flood is coming.’ You know, stuff like that. You need a local radio station and people. I think people in the front offices in some places don’t understand that. They make decisions strictly based on money, when this is not just about a money issue.”
Kathleen seems to smoothly manage the transition from writing radio news scripts to creating appealing characters and plots for her mysteries. She now has eight published novels, three more coming in 2025, and three more in 2026. These series include the Ella Shane Mysteries, set in the Gilded Age; The Old Stuff Mysteries, set at a museum in Connecticut; and under the pseudonym Nikki Knight, the Vermont Radio Mysteries. She has published roughly two dozen short stories, in anthologies, magazines and online.
The two periods she loves are the Renaissance and the Victorian era. “The Renaissance is a completely different place from what we’re used to,” she said. “The Victorian era is actually recognizably modern, but still very different. If Ella Shane was dropped into New York City today, she would recognize a lot of what’s going on. She’d approve of it, too. She wouldn’t understand social media and everything, but she’d be able to navigate. She’d figure it out.” Kathleen does extensive research for the Ella Shane books and was able to use some of that information in the first Old Stuff mystery, The Stuff of Murder.
There’s something else that Kathleen does, however. She’s part of change, for those working in radio and those writing fiction. “We have a couple of really good, really sharp, NPAs (news production assistants) and writers, people who are doing what I was doing at KDKA all those years ago and we’re bringing them along,” she said. “There’s a young woman, who used to be the NPA on Saturday morning shifts who is now pulling some reporter shifts and is on the air, and she’s terrific. She’s wonderful.”
Because synopsis writing comes easily to her, Kathleen offers her services to other authors. “A lot of fiction writers find that really intimidating, to take a 250 page story and boil it down to 250 words,” she said. That summary is critical when pitching a book proposal to an agent and publisher. “So that’s something that I thought would be a niche that I could fill.”
Kathleen is in the midst of a three-book contract for the Ella Shane books and will continue both the Old Stuff and Vermont Radio mysteries. She also pens short stories for mystery magazines, one nominated for a Derringer Award. And on the weekends she will be back at her desk at 1010 WINS, keeping New Yorkers updated on what’s happening in the city, announcing herself with her signature Kathleen Marple KALB.
For more information, go to Kathleen Marple Kalb’s website.
Her books on Amazon
The Ella Shane Mysteries:
A Fatal First Night
A Fatal Reception
A Fatal Finale
A Fatal Overture
Old Stuff Mystery:
The Stuff of Murder
Vermont Radio Mysteries:
Live, Local, and Dead
Live, Local, and Long Dead
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All photos courtesy of Kathleen Marple Kalb
