Joan Lunden Says Roger Grimsby 'Exploded' When She Was Offered Co-Anchor Seat on Eyewitness News: 'You Don't Deserve to Sit Next to Me'
Joan Lunden Says Roger Grimsby 'Exploded' When She Was Offered Co-Anchor Seat on Eyewitness News: 'You Don't Deserve to Sit Next to Me'
Virginia ChamleeTue, March 3, 2026 at 10:47 PM UTC
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Joan Lunden (left), Walter GrimsbyCredit: Mae Astute/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty; American Broadcasting Companies via Getty -
Joan Lunden is recounting one of her first broadcasts as a co-anchor — and how her male counterpart was "furious" when he learned she would be filling in
In her new memoir, Joan: Life Beyond the Script, Lunden recounts the incident, which came when she worked for New York's WABC-TV Eyewitness News in 1976
Lunden would go on to get a job as a co-anchor of Good Morning America, where she worked for 17 years
Joan Lunden is recalling a tense encounter with her Eyewitness News co-anchor Roger Grimsby.
In her new memoir, Joan: Life Beyond the Script, Lunden, 75, recounts one of her first broadcasts as a co-anchor on New York's WABC-TV Eyewitness News in 1976.
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It was late September 1976, she walked in the newsroom and learned that the station director wanted her to fill in for the popular anchorman Bill Beutel on the 6:00 p.m. news broadcast while he was out on vacation.
She got the news, Lunden writes, while Beutel's partner, anchorman Roger Grimsby, was also in the room.
"When Grimsby heard—clearly for the first time—that Tindiglia was offering me the chance to sit in the seat next to him on the 6:00 p.m. news during Bill’s absence, he exploded, leaping off the sofa and across the room until he was nose-to-nose with me," she writes. "He began to sputter, hardly able to put a sentence together, he was so furious. Inches from my face, he began to yell at me. 'You don’t deserve to sit next to me and to anchor the godd--n New York Eyewitness News! You haven’t been to the school of hard knocks, for Christ’s sake. You’re still wet behind the ears. You haven’t paid your dues—the price to sit at that anchor desk. You haven’t worked your way up to this coveted broadcast the way all of us have!' "
She continues: "Then he angrily threw the show script that had been in his hands onto the floor and stomped out of the office, leaving me standing there, totally shell-shocked."
While the outburst was unexpected, what happened once the two got behind the desk was even more shocking, she adds.
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"There was an eerie and unusual silence on set. Everyone felt the tension in the air. There was none of the usual joking around as we got closer to airtime," she writes.
After Grimsby opened the broadcast and teased the lineup of stories for the evening, he kicked it back to Lunden, who writes he "turned to me and, with steely, menacing eyes, bluntly said ... 'Barbara'" —a reference to Barbara Walters, who had just signed a million-dollar-a-year contract at ABC News and been made the first woman to anchor a network evening newscast.
"Roger just couldn’t help himself. I suppose he thought that behavior was warranted, given the outrageous onslaught of females daring to trespass into the male-dominated world of news on that evening," Lunden writes in the book. "What surprised me even more was that he was able to persuade the other male reporters on the show that night to join in with him, each ending their stories and throwing back to me with 'Barbara.' Not once during that broadcast did the show producer or the news director walk into the studio and tell them to knock it off."
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Lunden writes in her book that that first broadcast was "an uncomfortable and embarrassing experience," but adds: "I also think it was an opportunity to grow."
From the book: "It showed me that my path would be full of unexpected challenges. It also strength-ened my belief that I was capable of doing anything I set my mind to. It reminded me of something I’d once heard: 'If you weren’t going anywhere, they wouldn’t be trying to stop you.'"
Lunden would eventually leave Eyewitness News for an even bigger job: as co-anchor of Good Morning America in 1979, working alongside David Hartman and Charlie Gibson until 1997.
Joan: Life Beyond the Script is out on stands now.
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