Longtime morning news anchor retiring this month
By Greg Bates
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – It’s almost 4:30 a.m., and Kevin Rompa is his normal chipper self.
As he approaches his chair to deliver the morning news to his WBAY viewers, the veteran anchor is whistling a tune from his heyday.
“The 1970s rock genre is right up Kevin’s alley,” said WBAY chief meteorologist Steve Beylon. “And so, he’ll start whistling and then I’ll joke and say, ‘Kevin Rompa whistles all the best hits from the ’60s and ’70s. Now you can get a four-CD set of Kevin Rompa whistling the hits.’ Then I’ll be like, ‘You can hear Kevin whistle Smoke on the Water.’ I’ll list off a bunch of oldies but goodies. And Kevin, he laughs. It’s an inside joke.”
That’s the kind of guy Rompa is – always upbeat and letting his personality shine through.
It’s what Rompa’s co-workers said they love about him and what greets the viewers tuning into Action 2 News – which is the No. 1-rated morning show in the Green Bay market – every morning.
But on March 19, Rompa will head to the anchor desk for the last time.
Earlier this year, he announced his retirement after 32 years at WBAY.
“I’m a believer in if you can retire, if your financial person says it’s OK, then I think you do it when you can,” said Rompa, who will turn 60 in May.
Fellow morning anchor Tammy Elliott has been alongside Rompa for almost nine years.
She said the two have created a tight bond on and off air.
“It’s been wonderful,” Elliott said. “When I first came on the team, he joked with me and said, ‘Remember, only believe 10 percent of what I say.’ And I started laughing and I’m like, ‘You deliver the news every day.’ He said, ‘I’m not talking about the news. I’m talking about off the air.’ It’s that humor he has and having fun that makes it an enjoyable experience to sit on the desk with him.”
Viewers have grown accustomed to watching Rompa in the morning.
He came to WBAY in 1989 after radio stints in New London and Appleton, followed by 2 1/2 years as the main anchor at WAOW in Wausau.
Rompa was hired by WBAY to anchor a morning show the station was launching.
No other station in the market was airing a morning telecast, so Rompa became a trailblazer.
“At the time, I didn’t think much of it,” Rompa said. “I guess the neat thing is not to be first, but to spend my whole career here – I guess doing that and not moving on. There’s always a temptation when you think about getting up at 2:30 in the morning every day for that many years you think the guy would be smart enough to try and promote himself. But that’s not me, I’m not smart enough.”
Rompa, who grew up in Winona, Minnesota, and attended Winona State University, joked about his early-morning schedule.
However, he said he loved it.
He was able to raise his three kids with his wife, Maureen, and be done with work at 12:30 p.m., and have the rest of the day open.
That meant not a lot of sleep, but Rompa said he was used to it.
Since his first broadcast gig in 1983 – other than his time in Wausau – Rompa worked mornings.
“I’ve been up before the sun for almost my entire broadcast career,” Rompa said.
For Rompa’s first 11 years at WBAY, he anchored the morning show, recorded cut-ins and news briefs until 10 a.m., and then had to go out and shoot stories.
In 2000, he strictly took over as an anchor in the morning and for the station’s noon show.
Rompa is authentic in his own way
Rompa has kept the same philosophy for giving the news that he’s had for nearly four decades: be authentic.
“You have a certain broadcast style, but I’ve always tried to be kind of the same personality on air I am off air,” he said. “That makes it easier to be a broadcaster if you don’t try to be one person on air and then a different person when you’re off the air. I’ve tried to be authentic. I’ve tried to be believable. But also, I’ve never tried to take it too seriously.”
That authentic nature is what his co-workers said viewers enjoy.
“I hear from a lot of people they grew up watching him,” Elliott said. “People who watched Kevin when they were kids at home with their parents and now, they’re getting their own kids ready for school and they’re watching Kevin. They love that familiarity.”
Beylon said what you see is what you get with Rompa.
“Even when things aren’t always going the best, Kevin usually is positive and looks on the bright side of things,” said Beylon, who has worked on the morning show with Rompa for 10 years. “I’m going to miss that once he’s gone. It’s going to be hard to replicate that, and whoever steps into his chair has some big shoes to fill.”
Anchor/traffic reporter Kathryn Bracho, who has worked with Rompa for nearly 15 years, said he is a “genuinely warm, friendly, funny, kind and compassionate person.”
“He’s able to see other peoples’ perspectives, and that makes him a great journalist,” Bracho said. “He is also inherently curious and is constantly asking questions about stories. There’s no artifice with Kevin. The person he is in life is who you see on TV.”
Rompa said he has plans for retirement.
His 87-year-old mother still lives in the house he grew up in Minnesota, so Rompa said he would like to get over there more to help take care of her.
Rompa, who sings at several Catholic churches in the Green Bay area, said he would like to do more church volunteer work.
He is big into playing basketball, so once the pandemic is in check, he said he plans to return to the court at the YMCA.
Rompa said he would also like to do road trips in Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as visit as many National Parks as possible.
With his days numbered on the anchor desk, Elliott said she is going to miss having her friend and co-worker next to her.
“We can almost finish each other’s sentences, or I know when a Kevin pun is coming,” Elliott said. “Or I’ll read a script and I’ll think, ‘Kevin will have something great to say about this.’ I will definitely miss that.”