As I often do when I’m about to interview a public figure, I asked some friends for their impressions of that person. In this case, it was longtime local television anchor and current Minnesota Public Radio News host Angela Davis.
Each person I talked to said something along the lines of “she seems nice.” And despite the fact several were gay men, no one was being shady in the slightest. After decades in the Twin Cities media, Davis has a stellar reputation for being nice.
“I hear that a lot,” Davis said with a laugh. She proceeded to tell me a story from her time at the University of Maryland. Her then-boyfriend was in a fraternity that was sponsoring a Miss Black Unity pageant and he urged her to enter.
“In rehearsing and preparing, I wasn’t sure about the talent section,” she said. “I don’t sing, I’m not good at any arts. I ended up devoting a lot time to coaching other contestants. But when it came time for the pageant, I wanted to win. If I’m going to devote time to something, I want to win.
“I won Miss Congeniality. The prize that goes to the person who is nice. Who wants to be known for being nice? But that’s always been the impression I make on a lot of people. And I appreciate that and value that. It comes from the way I was raised.”
Davis, 53, grew up on a tobacco farm in Virginia. Her mother got pregnant while in college, moved back home and lived with her parents. Davis’ mother moved away when she was 9 and Davis stayed with her grandparents.
She went on to attend the University of Maryland on a full four-year scholarship and graduated with a journalism degree. After spending a few years at CNN and stations in Lexington, Ky., and Washington, D.C., Davis took a job at KSTP in 1994 and, beyond a brief stint living in Dallas, the Twin Cities has been her home ever since.
After decades at KSTP and WCCO, Davis made the decision to move to public radio and landed a hosting gig at the 11 a.m. hour in 2018. Davis lives in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood with her husband of 25 years, duch*esne Drew, who took the job as MPR president last summer after spending decades at the Star Tribune and nonprofits. They have two children currently attending historically Black colleges: Charlotte, a marketing major who just started her freshman year at North Carolina A&T State University; and Kevin, a software engineering major at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Earlier this month, Davis’ talk show moved to 9 a.m. at MPR. I spoke to Davis on the final day of her first week in the new time slot.
On growing up on a farm:
“There wasn’t a lot to do outside of work, church and school. I read a lot. I was the kid who had a subscription to Highlights. My grandparents were interested in history and politics and I watched the network news with them. And the Black church is a place of a lot of discussions about politics and business and life and survival.
“I developed an interest in how do people live outside the world I know. I watched ‘The Today Show’ and was fascinated by Bryant Gumbel. I loved being able to read the newspaper or watch network news and see other parts of the U.S. and the world.
“Early on in school, I was identified as someone with strong writing skills who was very chatty. Mr. Terry used to call me out in class. He called me by my last name. ‘Davis, I hope one day you’re able to get a job that pays for talking because you’re always running your mouth.’ Well, I’m getting paid for talking. I hope you’re proud of me.”
On choosing to pursue journalism:
“When I was growing up, I was deep into Home Ec and the Future Homemakers of America and that brought me into public speaking. I never had a fear of speaking in front of people, it always felt very natural. When I was deciding on a major, journalism seemed to fit. At the time, the Baltimore Sun was trying to diversify its staff, which was overwhelmingly white. They offered full four-year scholarships and four summer internships to train high school graduates. At the end, they had someone ready to hit the ground running.”
On her shift to television news:
“Having worked as an intern, I realized I didn’t want to work in newspapers. I love the power of strong writing and video. I turned down an offer to become a nightside police reporter and instead went to Atlanta to work at CNN, which paid half what the Sun would have paid me.
“My job was to rip the paper scripts off the printer, run them into the studio and hand them to the anchor on camera. I also had the distinguished duty of labeling tapes and logging raw video sent in. This was ’90 and ’91, during the first Gulf War and I spent a lot of time watching live video feeds overnight.
“I needed to understand television and how it all works together. I sat with writers and watched them and learned all the building blocks I needed to help me become a reporter. Working in a newsroom taught me how to have a thick skin and the importance of deadlines and accuracy. The work needs to be done fast and consistently with no time or effort for victory laps or praise. That has stuck with me. Journalism is not a field for everyone.”
On how, after working at local affiliates in Washington, D.C., and Lexington, she decided to move to the Twin Cities:
“When I was in Lexington, I covered city hall for two years and did some anchoring. I got an agent who was able to get me offers in the Minneapolis and Tampa. He asked if I had a preference and I said I didn’t. The market sizes were comparable. I didn’t care, I just wanted to get out of Kentucky. I interviewed first in Minneapolis and the offer came within days. I never went to Tampa.”
On meeting her future husband:
“I had reached out to Twin Cities Black Journalists and said ‘I’m this new person. When’s the next meeting?’ I hadn’t even started my job yet, but there I was at a lunch meeting at Arnellia’s on University Avenue. That’s where I met duch*esne. At the time, I had a boyfriend in Lexington and he had a girlfriend in Chicago, where he been at graduate school. I kept going to events. That was my original social circle.
“There wasn’t anything there, but we had mutual friends. I think because we were both transplants, we weren’t making a lot of money as new reporters and we didn’t have any connection to Minnesota other than the journalism jobs that brought us here. We started reading books at the same time together, a two-person book club. We’d get together at my apartment, have a meal and talk about the book. We’d talk about our impressions of Minnesota, talk about exploring the state and getting to know this place. One of our first activities together was skiing at Buck Hill.
“Friends would ask if we were dating and I’d say, ‘Why? We’re just friends.’ I got here in June ’94, we started dating in January ’95 and we were engaged in August ’95. We got married Jan. 13, 1996, in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Twenty years later, we returned with our kids and a small group of friends and family and renewed our wedding vows.”
On adjusting to life in Minnesota:
“I remember being aware that I’m the only Black person in this whole restaurant or I’m the only Black person in this grocery store. That was something I had never experienced as an adult. My colleagues and other people were always very welcoming and warm to me, eager to tell me about the state and give me advice.
“What was missing was that next step. The invitations. ‘Won’t you come to my home? Come with me as a guest to the lake?’ I needed people who actually included me. When duch*esne invited me to go skiing with him, that was a big deal to me.”
On moving to Dallas:
“When we got married, we were renting a duplex in Minneapolis. We moved to Dallas in 1997 when he got a job at the Dallas Morning News. I followed and got hired at the ABC station. We intended to stay there and built a new house in Arlington. But after two and a half years, we decided we didn’t really like Texas, so we moved back to Minnesota and back to our old workplaces.”
On choosing to settle in Highland Park:
“We both really believe in public schools and we started looking at school districts. We didn’t have kids yet, but we planned to. There were three public elementary schools all within a mile of where we chose to live. I’ve become one of the members of St. Small. I like that, I embrace that. When I’m out and about, at the end of the day I want to go home someplace quiet and familiar. I like routine, structure and patterns. I like neighborhoods.”
On making the move from television to public radio:
“I was getting ready to turn 50 and I thought, ‘What have I done in my life?’ I spent my entire career in television news and had accomplished every goal, won awards, traveled internationally, covered every kind of story. I never had an interest in doing network news because I didn’t want to deal with the traveling. I like coming home at night and I wanted to be very present for my children.
“I stayed in television for a long time because I felt representation really matters. People need to see a black woman on the news. But I felt the work I was doing was very forgettable, demanding and stressful. I needed to do something more meaningful. When I learned MPR was looking for a talk show host, I was interested. During the interview, I said, ‘If you want someone to be the traditional voice of public radio, you’re taking a gamble with me. That’s not my background. I need to be me.’ ”
On what it’s like when your boss is also your husband:
“We’ve always had conversations about work, we’ve always talked about our newsrooms. That’s the difference now. We cannot and do not talk about work. We have teenage kids and we’re preparing to launch these strong young adults into this world. I’ve never had any interest in going into management, I’m trying to stay in my lane and be a host. He’s what I’ve always wanted in a boss, someone who lets you do your best work and equips you to do your best work.”
On settling into her role as an MPR host:
“With my talk show, I try to focus on solutions and getting people to think about what we as individuals have control over. I hope the conversation sparks new conversations and listeners start talking and thinking about issues that may not have spent time thinking about before.
“I think talking things out has been so valuable for me as a child, a teen, an adult and as a journalist. People learn in different ways and some people learn from listening. What I’ve learned from my time at MPR is the power of the human voice. I love using audio for storytelling. Hearing someone’s voice is a really powerful thing.”
