With WLWT-TV news anchors Sheree Paolello and Mike Dardis announcing their engagement, I asked married morning radio hosts Chris O'Brien and Janeen Coyle to provide some advice for a long, happy marriage.
In the process, I inspired their song parody, The News 5 Bunch, adapted from TV's iconic blended family, The Brady Bunch. In less than 15 hours, it was on the air.
Chris and Janeen have been "married with microphones" as co-hosts of WGRR-FM (103.5) mornings for 23-and-a-half years. They got their nickname from the headline on my Enquirer story about them when they started working in 1995. The former Q102 DJs celebrate their 34th wedding anniversary in July.
During our conversation, when I explained that Paolello and her three young sons would move from Northern Kentucky to the Mason area, where Dardis' son was a stand-out high school athlete, they mentioned The Brady Bunch.
On Tuesday morning they premiered The News 5 Bunch song on their WGRR-FM show:
"Here's the story, of a fine news lady, who was bringing up three very handsome dudes. She would sit behind the desk on TV nightly, with the breaking news.
"Here's the story, of her guy co-anchor, who would sit there by her side almost every night. After several years of 5, 6 and 11, it all seemed right….."
Most of our conversation was about tips from their personal experience for Mike and Sheree, who got engaged Dec. 28 after co-anchoring together for seven years. Here's their advice:
--"Always drive to work in separate cars. You don't want to start off the day arguing," Coyle says. (Yes, they drive separately. O'Brien usually arrives first each morning. After their morning show, he deals with production things and she works with sales people and administrative issues.)
--Talk about work at home. "We're able to bring in to work a lot of stuff we talked about at home. We're able to bounce things off each other since we're together all day," he says.
--"You should be separate people at work. Don't make your concerns a joint concern" when dealing with coworkers or bosses, she says.
--"Forget that stuff about 'Don't go to bed angry.' It happens," O'Brien says. His wife quickly adds: "But it's rare."
--"We're a good team," O'Brien says. "Janeen makes Thanksgiving dinner, and I remember to change the batteries in the smoke alarms."
