Ron Hunter dies at 70, the real-life Ron Burgundy

Posted on June 27, 2008

Previous Image | Back to Post | Next Image

Ron Hunter dies at 70, the real-life Ron Burgundy

Previous Image | Back to Post | Next Image

Posted by: Monya

One comment

Comments

1. Jolie Kenney on 8-22-2009

   Wow. I was just web surfing to see if I could find folks on linked.com or facebook and decided to check on Ron. The pix are amazing. Just how I remember him.

   I met him when I was 21 and in Chicago barhopping with my three roommates, all of us UAL stews. He came up to me and said he was new in town and was a “college student”. I was and still am gullible and, truly, didn’t care. He sensed that so then proceeded to tell me that he was really a network anchor man just hired by NBC and that he’d prove it by sending a limo to my apt. (in the burbs, no less) the next day to bring me to lunch at The Pump Room. I thought, yeah, right, whatever.

   When I got home that night, I was telling my roomies what had transpired and, lo and behold, I opened the TV Guide to see a whole page welcoming Ron Hunter to the evening news! Now, many women may have been schmoozed by this. I thought it was a riot. Mainly because my father was a network anchorman (Ron did not know this at the time) and because, soon after, Chicago Magazine had labelled him the “Ted Baxter” of the real news world.

   (Ironically, my father is the one who found the young, gorgeous Jane Pauley after her college graduation and gave her her first job so it was really a unique situation!)

   Yet, Ron did have a good part of him. I’d enjoy his cooking ME dinner at his Lakepoint Tower penthouse (now, I believe owned by Oprah?) as a thank you for sitting under the main camera (NO JOKE…UNDER THE CAMERA IN A CHAIR JUST UNDER THE LENS) while he did the news so that he could keep looking at me to see if he was doing okay. Every time I was in town, not on a trip.

   Then the small world of Ron and me continued when I ran into Pat O’Brian in Los Angeles years later when he and his family had moved there, as had I, when my husband (I had married a newspaper reporter) and I were at a party at Connie Chung’s. Prior to this, when in Chicago, Pat, his wife, Ron and I would “double date” on occasion. He was quite relieved to see that I had married a very wonderful man and that it was not Ron.

   Then the scandal about Ron killing his 2nd wife broke…

   Another weird way to learn about it. Walking through the room, getting ready for work with the TV on and MAURY POVICH reporting the story!

   My dad kept me in the loop and said Ron was acquitted but it did creep me out.

   By the way, he was 38 years old when I was “with” him for a year. I was, as I said, 21. He’d been married before and had a huge oil portrait of his young son on the wall in his living room. If he was TOTAL ego, he’d have been in the portrait with him, don’t you think? That would’ve been the Ron we all “saw” but never really knew, did we?

   Yet, I was also asked by O.J. Simpson to go to Mexico with him for a week. Before marrying Nicole, of course. I did not go but he was the most charming man I’d ever met.

   Call me stupid or call me lucky. I guess I was, and still am, both.

   Like or Dislike: 0  0

Leave a Reply