Corey McPherrin retires: Fox 32 anchor chose Chicago over network TV

With the red-and-white Fox 32 Chicago logo scrolling behind him, Corey McPherrin strikes the classic anchor pose — the one that demands your attention and says: “You can trust me. Absolutely.”

Then McPherrin frowns slightly and tells the photographer taking his picture that, to be “consistent,” he’d like to step away to apply some makeup.

A short while later, the veteran Chicago newsman is in front of a lighted mirror, blending flesh tones in the palm of hand. He runs a brush through his already immaculate gray hair. Until about 10 years ago, a makeup artist took care of his face, he says. Through the 1990s, another person would check his hair. Blame budget cuts.

There’s been a lot of reflection this week about how things used to be, now that McPherrin, 68, is retiring Friday.

“A lot of plaid and a lot of hair,” he jokes about his early days.

A Markham native, McPherrin grew up in an era when few wanted to miss the TV news.

“It was just when TV was exploding in the ’60s. It was still fascinating, overwhelming and so intoxicating,” he says. McPherrin was a news junkie kid, reading all four of the city’s newspapers daily.

His first job after college, in 1977, was in Davenport, Iowa, doing TV news reporting and some radio anchoring — for peanuts. Before sunrise, he’d head to the local police and fire stations to see if he could find some overnight news.

“It was mostly a waste of time,” he says.

Then on to downstate Quincy, where he did sports and weather.

“I had to learn how to read the weather forecast ... which was basically magnets on a map,” he says.

There were stops in New Orleans, Atlanta and New York, where he was WABC-TV’s main sportscaster. He was at the old Candlestick Park for the 1989 World Series when a magnitude 6.9 earthquake shook Northern California. Suddenly, he was a news reporter again. His reporting brought him national attention, including from a certain ABC “World News Tonight” anchor.

“Coming at me was Peter Jennings. He said, ‘Hey kid, keep up the good work.’ ... I just got the biggest kick out of that,” he said.

Bigger opportunities beckoned with the network in New York. But he made the “really difficult” decision to return home to Chicago, when the chance presented itself in 1991. He and his first wife [he’s since divorced and remarried] had a baby son, Jack. It was also a chance to cover, among other teams, his beloved White Sox.

“I’m in love with the city and always have been,” he says.

He anchored the sports desk at WBBM-Channel 2 for four years, before moving to FOX 32, where he’s stayed for 28 years and co-anchors the 5 and 9 p.m. news Monday through Friday.

“He’s more than just a co-worker. You don’t always get to anchor with your friends, and over the years, we’ve become very close friends and I’m really going to miss that tremendously,” said the woman who’s been by his side on set for about the last 10 years, Dawn Hasbrouck.

It isn’t the news exclusives that McPherrin mentions when he thinks about the highlights of his career.

In 2005, the White Sox had just won the American League pennant for the first time since 1959. McPherrin was reflecting on what it meant to the team and the city.

Live on the air, he paused. His voice shook.

“It means just as much if not more to the long-suffering fans, like my dad, who is 84 years old and has never seen the team win a World Series,” said McPherrin, whose father died in 2010.

The moment lasted seconds, but “I got more reaction from that than anything I’ve ever done.”

In recent years, McPherrin has overcome prostate cancer. He had heart-valve replacement surgery six years ago. His longtime buddy, Fox political editor Mike Flannery, retired a few weeks ago. He’s in good shape, McPherrin says, but, inevitably, the close calls have made him consider his mortality.

As he prepares for his last night on the air, he says he feels deeply grateful for what’s he had.

“If you asked me 25 years ago would I be working at 68, I would have laughed,” he says.