WBBM-AM 780`s Chris Boden and Natalie Olinger have achieved considerable professional success while still on the sunny side of 30. Olinger is a newswriter, news editor and fill-in anchor at the all-news station, while Boden serves as a weekend sports anchor and also fills in on weekdays.
Along with WGN-AM 720`s Steve King and Johnnie Putman and WLS-AM/FM 890/
94.7`s Don Wade and Roma, the two Oak Forest residents are also one of the few married couples currently working on the air for the same Chicago radio station.
For the two of them, working together has become something of a habit, beginning when they were both working at Columbia College`s WCRX-FM 88.1 and continuing when they worked for the Tribune Radio Network`s now defunct Infornet service.
”It`s become old hat for us, though it hasn`t been done intentionally,” said Olinger, who is expecting their first child in November. ”I don`t know if we`d ever have the right chemistry to do a talk show together, though, because I don`t follow sports that closely and that`s all Chris thinks about.”
That last rejoinder draws a howl of protest from Boden, as the two banter good-naturedly while seated at the kitchen table of their modest house on a quiet, leafy street in Oak Forest where they`ve lived for the last two years, after moving from Crestwood. Their modestly furnished home with a little-used above ground pool in the back yard differs little from their neighbors`.
And that`s the way Boden and Olinger plan to keep things. While they both work at one of the city`s top-rated radio stations, they scoff at the idea of being local celebrities.
”Most people around here don`t know what we do for a living,” said Olinger. ”In fact, the only reason our neighbors know is because somebody else told them. I love being a normal person, which radio allows you to be more than television does. We`re just normal people who do the same kinds of things as everyone else.”
”I`m very uncomfortable with the idea of being a celebrity,” said Boden. ”I think 50 percent of the population has more important jobs in terms of where it fits in with society than we have-people like social workers, doctors and teachers.”
Jim Wiser, producer of Jonathon Brandmeier`s show on WLUP-AM/FM 1000/97.9 and a fellow Columbia College alumnus, vouches for the couple`s sincerity on that subject.
”They busted their butts to get to where they are,” said Wiser, an Oak Lawn native who was the best man at Boden`s and Olinger`s wedding. ”They don`t have big egos. It`s not like they stayed in the south suburbs to flaunt what they do. It`s because they genuinely like the area and were brought up there. They deserve everything they`ve gotten because they`ve worked hard to get to where they are.”
Both of them credit their Southwest Side and southwest suburban roots for their discomfort with any suggestion of celebrityhood. Although they didn`t meet until 1983 when they were broadcasting students at Columbia College`s campus in the loop, Boden and Olinger grew up a scant 2 1/2 miles away from each other.
Olinger is a Southwest Side native who made her radio debut at 14 at Bogan High School`s radio station. Boden grew up in Burbank and was a reserve guard on Luther South`s 1980 Class A state championship basketball team that also included Olympic gold medal triple jumper Mike Conley.
Married in 1988, theirs was initially a love-hate relationship as Olinger laughingly recounts it, calling to mind the dynamics between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in the old ”Moonlighting” TV series.
”Chris says it was love at first sight, but I hated him at first,” she said. ”In fact, I hated him so much I made it a point to sit at the opposite end of the classroom from him when we both had a class taught by (Chicago broadcaster) Dave Baum. He was trying to impress me, which was the last thing he should have done, telling me stupid jokes all the time.”
”I was attracted to her right away, but she couldn`t stand me because she had something against jocks,” said Boden.
”When I became the news director at Columbia`s WCRX and Chris was the sports director, I still tried to stay away from him,” said Olinger. ”I was working the morning shift with his best friend, Jim Wiser, and Chris would purposely come early just to harass me. He drove me crazy. I`d be typing my news stories and getting ready for my newscast, and he`d be reading it over my shoulder and getting in my way.”
Through sheer persistence, Boden eventually won her over. What finally did the trick was a bit of chivalry on Boden`s part: He offered to carry Olinger`s typewriter.
”The more I watched him I decided that he wasn`t such a bad person,”
she said. ”I discovered he was a very kind and compassionate person.”
Appropriately enough, their first date was a Blackhawks game. Neither of them can recall what the final score was.
There are dangers in any married couple working for the same company, as Boden and Olinger found out before their tenure at WBBM. They were both phased out of their respective jobs when the Tribune Radio Network decided to close its statewide Infornet news service in 1988. The timing was less than optimal, as the two had just returned from their honeymoon.
”That was not fun,” said Olinger. ”We vowed after that that we`d never work at the same place again, but I guess things change.”
Luckily, they weren`t unemployed for long. When another company bought the Infornet network, now called the Illinois News Network, Boden made the transition. As for Olinger, she did free-lance radio work and worked as a fill-in news anchor at WGN-AM for several months before a job opened up at WBBM-AM in August of 1989. Boden followed her there a little less than a year later.
One who wasn`t surprised at their relatively quick rise to the top was their former instructor at Columbia College, Dave Baum. As impressed as he is with their success, he`s even more impressed with them as people.
”Chris and Natalie are the kind of young people you want to see get into our business,” said Baum, a veteran of WIND-AM 560 and WBBM-AM who currently works part-time at all-sports WSCR-AM 820. ”There are a lot of people in broadcasting who make it but are not really the kind of people you`d want to spend time with outside of work. But they`re both nice kids, and I think the sky`s the limit for them professionally.”
According to Olinger, because she uses her maiden name professionally it took many of their co-workers a while to figure out she and Boden were married. That suited her and Boden just fine.
”We try to be as professional as possible at work, and while we`re there we don`t really talk about anything personal,” said Olinger, who works on the same newscasts as Boden on weekends, though usually in an off-air capacity.
”I respect his craft enough that if he comes to me when I`m sitting at the editor`s desk and says, `I`ve got to get this information on the air now,` I don`t even ask him what it is. I just tell him to go in the studio and get it on the air.”
As a former high school athlete who still works out for at least two hours four times a week, Boden appears to have found the perfect job. After graduation from Columbia he worked for Sports Phone, Sports Channel and Multimedia Cablevision as a sports reporter before coming to WBBM.
”I wanted to stay involved with sports,” he said of his career path.
”Ever since my dad started taking me to games as a kid, sports has always appealed to me. If it wasn`t going to be on the field, I was determined to find a way to keep getting into ballparks and stadiums one way or another.”
While he still occasionally covers sporting events on location, most of Boden`s reporting is done from the WBBM studios. He also serves as the producer of the station`s weekend ”Sportsline” program. And yes, he was one of those kids who meticulously kept statistics of his favorite athletes.
”He still does that,” said Olinger. ”Every night he sits there with his books and newspapers spread out all over the place, writing all that stuff down.”
”But now I have to do it for my job,” said Boden, a bit defensively.
With their varied hours, Boden and Olinger have a less than typical homelife. Working weekends only, Boden is at the station from 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. When he is asked to cover a weekend sporting event he`ll often work until 7 p.m.
As for Olinger, she works a seven-hour workday Wednesday through Sunday, making the 35-minute commute to the CBS headquarters on McClurg Court that houses WBBM-AM, WBBM-FM 96.3 and WBBM-TV CBS-Ch.2. She plans to return to work only a few weeks after her baby is born. Boden will play Mr. Mom on most weekdays.
”We`ve never had a normal homelife, so I guess we don`t know what we`re missing,” said Olinger, who recalls working 32 days in a row during the Persian Gulf War. ”We work every Christmas, every Thanksgiving. It`s not unusual for me to get off at 7 p.m. on Friday and have to be back at work at 2 a.m. on Saturday.”
”We know what we`re missing. We just haven`t experienced it,” Boden said matter-of-factly. ”In two years I`ve only had one weekend day off. In the last two years or so I`ve been out on a Friday night once.”
Their weekend is Monday and Tuesday, Olinger`s two days off. During their off hours they like to go for walks at nearby forest preserves, watch videos and socialize with friends. One favorite activity is playing miniature golf at Hollywood Park in Crestwood, which Boden admits his wife usually wins.
”When she gets in the `zone,` look out,” he said.
While most of Chicago`s radio and television people tend to live either on Chicago`s North Side, the North Shore or in the western suburbs, Boden and Olinger are staunch south suburbanites.
Where they live has some impact on their approach to their jobs, said Boden: ”I think living here gives us a more balanced perspective. It`s probably more prevalent in news than in sports. Sometimes if something is happening on the North Side that very well could also be taking place on the South Side-like power outages during bad storms-because we live down here we`ll probably make that extra effort to find out about it.”
Of the two of them, Olinger is probably the most resolute on staying in the same general area in which they grew up.
”I get very attached to things, and I`m just comfortable in this area,” she said. ”I know it well, my family lives nearby, and I see no reason to leave. I think people tend to be more community-oriented in the south and southwest suburbs, too.”
Both of them feel they`re just partway along to their ultimate career goals. Boden would like to be a full-time sports anchor in prime time and perhaps give TV a try, while Olinger is looking to be a full-time news anchor. Still, they acknowledge their luck in having been able to spend their entire professional lives in the nation`s third largest media market.
”In college I used to believe that at least 90 percent of landing a good job in broadcasting was based on talent,” said Olinger. ”Now I know it`s only 10 percent talent and 90 percent luck, because the job market is tight and it`s very difficult to find jobs like these. We`ve been very fortunate.”
