Maury Povich says Connie Chung got her first newsroom writing job by walking across the street to a bank and recruiting a teller to take over her old job as the news director's copy girl. He tells the story on Stavvy's World #206 with Stavros Halkias, dating her hiring to around 1969 or 1970, and then turns it into a story about his own firing years later.
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
Everything here is Maury's recollection from that conversation. He hedges the year himself, and this article keeps it that way.
The copy girl nobody noticed
Maury says he started in 1966. Chung was hired a few years later, he thinks in 1969 or 1970, as the news director's copy girl. The job, as he describes it, meant going to the wire machines, pulling off the copy and distributing it to reporters. Nobody took notice of her, he says.
The conversation places this newsroom in Washington, D.C.; later in the segment the copy girl is referred to as "the copy girl in DC." Maury does not name the station in the clip.
"You have to replace yourself"
Then a weekend writing job opened up. In Maury's telling, Chung went to the news director and said she wanted it, that she wanted to be a journalist and that was why she was there.
The news director's first answer was no: she was his assistant. Then came the condition. If she wanted the job, she would have to replace herself.
Across the street to the bank
What Chung did next is the heart of the Short. Maury says she walked out of the newsroom, up the stairs, across the street and into the bank. She looked at the first woman teller and asked whether she wanted to be in TV, then told her to come with her.
In the conversation, it is framed as the moment everybody knew how unbelievable Connie Chung would be. Whether the teller stayed in television is not part of his account, and this article does not guess.
From her colleague to her "second banana"
Stavros then asks, jokingly, how Maury convinced her to marry him. Maury's answer winds forward through both careers. He says he was married at the time. Chung became a big star at CBS and later went to Los Angeles to anchor the news for the local station.
Maury, meanwhile, describes what he calls a seven-year odyssey, working around the country, including Chicago and Los Angeles. After all those years, he says, he ended up as her second banana: she was the star, and he was the co-anchor.
Fired six months in
Then came the setback. Six months after he was hired, Maury says, the station brought in a new general manager, and he was fired. It was, as the conversation frames it, the first time he felt failure.
He describes lying down on the couch and watching newscasts. Watching them, he decided he was as good as those guys. Within months, he says, he got a job in San Francisco.
The closing joke
Maury ends with a line he says he always uses. Connie was the only person he knew in Los Angeles, and he was going through a divorce, so, he jokes, in order for Connie Chung to love you, she must first pity you.
That is a punch line about his own low point, told for laughs, not a statement of how Connie Chung felt. The clip is lighter than a career history: two stories about getting ahead, one about a copy girl who solved her own staffing problem and one about an anchor who got fired and decided he was good enough to keep going.
FAQ
How did Connie Chung get her first writing job?
According to Maury Povich, when a weekend writing job opened, the news director told her she had to replace herself as his copy girl, so she recruited a teller from the bank across the street.
When did Connie Chung start as a copy girl?
Maury says he thinks it was around 1969 or 1970. That is his estimate in the interview.
Why was Maury Povich fired?
In his account, a new general manager arrived six months after Maury was hired as Chung's co-anchor, and he was fired. He does not give a further reason in this clip.