'I'm taking a new road': WBAY bids farewell to Kathryn Bracho after 21 years, as she moves on from TV news
GREEN BAY - Kathryn Bracho’s colleagues on “Action 2 News This Morning” sent her off after 21 years at WBAY-TV with surprise video greetings, hugs and cake on her final broadcast.
The co-anchor and traffic reporter announced on Tuesday she was leaving the station to an outpouring of well wishes from viewers. On Friday, they learned what her “new road” will look like outside of the industry.
Bracho said she’ll be working from home for a small public relations and marketing firm with architecture, engineering and construction clients. Her focus will be writing, including news releases, blog posts and articles. As a mother of two sons with husband Michael, a WBAY photojournalist she met on the job, the shift away from a very early morning schedule will work better for their family.
“I’m taking a new road. Now I have a tween and a teen and they are staying up later. They have night activities, and I want to be there for them with what they need now,” she said during Friday’s broadcast. “... I’m ready for a different kind of challenge, and so it’s the right time for me to do this.”
Bracho said she had been thinking about leaving for a long time.
During taped interview segments with co-anchor Tammy Elliott, Bracho looked back on her career, including her hiring as a reporter in the station's Fox Valley newsroom in 2003, joining the morning team as a co-anchor in 2006 and WBAY’s debut of traffic segments in 2015 in which she kept viewers abreast of drive times, delays and detours.
Her WBAY colleagues past and present shared video messages. Retired morning anchor Kevin Rompa said even with all the changes in the news industry, the one thing he could always count on when the camera light came on was that Bracho would be prepared and deliver quality work. Burke, the former Fox Valley bureau chief, praised her “can-do and go-getter attitude.”
Chief meteorologist Steve Beylon, who couldn’t be in studio with Bracho, Elliott, Aisha Morales and Emerson Lehmann as he normally is each weekday, shared a taped farewell.
“I’ll miss your uncanny ability to quickly spot spelling errors and typos in my weather graphics,” he said, pointing to one he slid in just for her. “Thank you for being my best friend at work for all these years. I’ll miss you a ton.”
The hardest part of leaving will be not being able to see her co-workers each morning, Bracho said. She also talked of how grateful she is for the interaction with viewers and their kindness through the years — messages of sympathy after the passing of her mother and a handmade baby blanket after the birth of her son.
“The TV news world is no longer for me, and I feel really sure about my decision to go, but I will miss you,” she told viewers during her sign-off. “Every time you flipped on ‘Action 2 News This Morning’ you gave me the gift of your time and your trust, and that really means a lot.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or [email protected]. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: WBAY-TV bids farewell to Kathryn Bracho as she embarks on 'a new road'