Sue Simmons on co-anchor Chuck Scarborough: 'We were such opposites, and somehow we meshed'

Chuck Scarborough's record-breaking 50th anniversary as anchor of WNBC/4 arrives Monday, but what of his co-anchor Sue Simmons who spent 32 (and 1/2) years by his side? She's 81 now, living quietly in Manhattan, and for the past 12 (and 1/2) years, has largely dropped out of sight.

She's a private citizen who has “no public profile [and] I don't have any desire for one,” she said in an interview with Newsday in 2019.

In a brief phone interview Friday, Simmons spoke about that long-ago, and long-running partnership, which was for decades rendered in shorthand (“Chuck 'n Sue”) by viewers and Ch. 4.

“I'm not very articulate about this but we were such opposites, and somehow we meshed. He was a lot more on the serious side when I first met him, but I chipped away over the years and he became such a fun guy. He had a wicked sense of humor, but humor most of the time he couldn't do on the air, so viewers always saw him as a straight-up guy.”

Asked if he could have lasted these 50 years without her, she laughs (“Oh, that's like 'When did you stop beating your mama!' ”), then says, “Oh, yes. He would have had a slightly different image, but the man is a top professional.”

In an interview a couple of weeks ago, Scarborough (who turned 80 last fall) was asked whether he could have made the half-century mark without Simmons: “Probably not,” he said.

Born in Greenwich Village, Simmons, daughter of prominent jazz bassist John Simmons, had anchor jobs in New Haven, Connecticut; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C., before joining WNBC/4 in 1980 where she became a trailblazer, as the first African American woman to co-anchor a nightly New York news broadcast, and New York's most prominent female anchor as well.

Her contract wasn't renewed in 2012 — most observers say the decision was mutual — but in that 2019 interview, Simmons called it “a messy ending and one that I didn't want.” Nevertheless, she said there was no bitterness: “I had worked until I was 70 and for an anchorwoman, that was ancient … I think about all the joy I had through those years. I'm so chill. Not bitter about anything. NBC has given me a fabulous life.”

How's “Chuck 'n Sue” these days? She said Friday that “we're still friends but don't see as much of each other as we did when I first left, but we do see each other every couple of months.”

Meanwhile, “I'm doing fine. One day blends into another … life is good.”