KWWL anchor Ron Steele leaving after 50 years

WATERLOO — Ron Steele, a fixture of local journalism in Eastern Iowa for more than 50 years, announced he is leaving KWWL-TV.

Steele broke the news during the 10 p.m. Tuesday newscast.

"I have come to an agreement with and accepted an offer from KWWL which will end my career here on Thursday, Feb. 27.

"KWWL has been very generous to me and my family over the years. They have given me some amazing opportunities to go around the world and cover news, weather and sports for these five decades, and I will be forever grateful," Steele said. "I have a lot to be thankful for."

Now the dean of Iowa news anchors, Steele was hired at NBC-affiliate KWWL-TV as sports director and began work April 1, 1974. He was promoted to anchor in 1979. He told The Courier in April he knows of just a couple of anchors in the country who have been broadcasting as long and for the same station.

In addition to helming the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts, he’s hosted “The Steele Report,” a Sunday morning half-hour news and interview show, since 2013.

Steele was born in Washington in southeast Iowa and raised in Wapello, where his family moved when he was 6. He said he loved growing up in a small town. That’s why he and his wife of more than 50 years, Candy, a native of Waterloo, decided to make a home in Hudson, a town of about 2,500 10 miles southwest of Waterloo. They have three grown children and eight grandchildren.

“I said to myself, ‘We are not moving our kids while they’re growing up,” Steele said. He and Candy met while they were students at the University of Iowa. She is the retired manager of cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, now MercyOne Waterloo.

Steele was never just a “talking head.”

“I have a callous on my shoulder from carrying the camera,” he said. “The cameras were heavy. I love being the videographer. I love being the editor.”

He also is familiar to viewers for his coverage of high school football as part of KWWL-TV's "Friday Night Heroes," covering local games on nights when he also would anchor the 10 p.m. new broadcast.

He was enthralled by broadcasting since he was a child.

“Radio was a big deal to me,” he said. “I used to listen to WLS, an AM radio station out of Chicago.” He listened to the station’s Top 40 hits show every afternoon. “It just got me interested in radio. It was something I wanted to do.”

He went to the UI to be a coach and a teacher, but on a dormitory bulletin board he saw a job opening posted for a disc jockey at the campus radio station. “I applied for that job and got it, and it pretty much changed everything for me,” Steele said.

After a stint at WOC-AM in Davenport, he learned the sports director at KWWL-TV was leaving the station and was offered the job.

“I was 24 years old. I think I may have been the youngest sports director in the Midwest at the time," Steele said.

He worked with a pantheon of Eastern Iowa TV journalists over the years, including Liz Mathis, Bobbi Earles, Ann Kerian, Tara Thomas, Amanda Goodman, Abby Turpin and now Elizabeth Klinge.

Steele received numerous awards and honors from the Iowa Broadcast News Association as well as regional Emmy Awards. He’s a member of the Iowa Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame.

Steele survived a health scare in 2017 when he suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery at UI Health Care. But as a veteran of 10 marathons and a leg of the 1996 Olympic torch run, he bounced back with the help of his wife and her cardiac rehabilitation background. And he still maintains a workout regimen.

He has no regrets about spending the bulk of his career in one market.

“The Cedar Valley’s a fantastic place. We love it here,” he said.