Back in 2018, Noël left a high-profile gig at 9News, the Mile High City's top-rated television-news purveyor, to join the staff of KPRC-2, a station in Houston, the sixth-largest TV market in the country. (Denver sits at seventeen.) But she missed Colorado and moved back several years later, without a new position. She stops short of dubbing this strategy "career suicide," but concedes that "in this business, nobody leaves a job without having another job lined up."
As a result, Noël was forced to play a waiting game that lasted far longer than she'd hoped. She was off the air for two full years before being invited to share the Fox31 news desk with journalistic mainstay Jeremy Hubbard. But despite this lengthy time in limbo, she insists that she never considered pivoting to a new profession.
"I think there's a bug that bites people who stay in this business for a long time," she says. "Once you get that itch to share stories and dig for answers and give a voice to people in the community who deserve one — well, I don't know how to scratch that itch without doing this particular job. And I missed it.
"I'm very grateful for the unexpected time off," she adds, especially since she welcomed her first child, a son, in the interim. Her Fox31 debut took place on January 21, his first birthday. But, she stresses, "I definitely was itching to get back."
According to Fox31 news director Sean McNamara, the unusual nature of Noël's journey adds value to her arrival at Fox31. "She had a good run at another station in the market before going to Houston, and she did well there," he says. "But as her family started to grow, she came back to Denver and made a decision to be a part of the community because she likes it here so much. For an anchor, that's a big part of the equation. She wanted to be here."
Her fondness for the area dates back to her youth. Noël is originally from Stevensville, Michigan, which she describes as "kind of a one-stoplight town" in the western part of the state. But she fell in love with Colorado during family ski vacations and might have attended the University of Colorado Boulder had she not been too nervous to venture far from home. She wound up enrolling at Hope College in nearby Holland, Michigan, where she ran track — "I competed in a lot of sports growing up," she notes — and focused on pre-med courses. "My dad's a doctor and my brother was pursuing medicine," she says.
Three years into her education at Hope, she changed her major to communications, with a minor in writing. But it wasn't until December of her senior year that she decisively shifted in the direction of TV news.
"The turning point was a mass-media class," she recalls. "Our professor asked us to interview someone we felt was a leader in the community. I was constantly watching the news, and the closest television market was Grand Rapids. So I reached out to one of the morning anchors on WZZM-13, Catherine Behrendt, and asked if I could interview her." During the sit-down that followed, Noël continues, "she asked, 'What are you planning to do after you graduate?' I said, 'I have no idea. I'm interested in TV, but I have no experience in broadcast.' She said, 'We're looking for our first intern,' and basically offered me an internship on the spot."
Before long, Noël was assigned to an entertainment/lifestyle program called Take Five & Company, and her duties went well beyond making coffee. "They gave me a camera and said, 'Go learn how to shoot a story, how to write the story you shot, how to edit it," she says. "I was a twenty-year-old, and they put me on the air — and I'm sure I was horrible. But I had really great mentors. The people on the show were tough on me, but very encouraging." After she graduated college, she was hired and subsequently became a co-host. "That was my first big break," she recalls.
Christine Noël, right, with former 9News colleagues Amelia Earhart, Marty Coniglio, Corey Rose and Gary Shapiro.
Courtesy of 9News
A face-to-face with Dennis later, Noël was given the chance. She became a staffer in April 2014, beginning as a weekend-evening anchor and reporter alongside longtimer Mark Koebrich. After a couple of years, she was promoted to weekday anchor on 9News' morning-news block — one of the most consistently popular and successful a.m. broadcasts in the country. Collaborating with Gary Shapiro and Corey Rose, she instantly became one of Denver's most recognizable TV personalities.
Although she has nothing but compliments for Shapiro, Rose and the rest of the 9News crew, Noël offers fewer positives about the early schedule. "Mornings are a different kind of grind, and it started wearing on me personally," she acknowledges. "I loved my time with Corey and Gary, but I wanted to find a way to stay in the business and do what I love, which is telling people's stories — without being so tired." When KPRC-2 in Houston reached out, she remembers half-jokingly (but half-not) telling colleagues, "I'm going to go to Texas to get some sleep."
Still, Koebrich's reaction to learning about her planned departure is the one that stuck in her mind: "He said, 'Christine, go. But you can always come back.'"
The hours in Houston were certainly better: Noël helmed the noon and 4 p.m. weekday newscasts and was the primary fill-in anchor for the late wrap-up. Then, toward the end of her three-year, ten-month run, she served as top anchor at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. in the wake of a cohort's retirement — and even after another former anchor was given the job on a permanent basis, she was offered a contract to stick around.
Family considerations dissuaded her from taking this deal. Noël's husband is the chief financial officer of an oil-and-gas business, and even though Houston is a mecca for that industry, his obligations required him to stay in Denver. So the couple was stuck in a classic long-distance relationship; he was able to fly to Houston at least once a week, but neither of them felt such a schedule was sustainable. More important, both wanted to make Denver home.
With that in mind, Noël relocated to Colorado in late 2022 after her KPRC contract expired, hoping that the right opportunity would open at a Denver station. But one didn't for a long, long time.
Granted, plenty of folks have come and gone from local signals over the past half-decade or so. In the couple of years immediately before and after the pandemic struck in 2020, at least sixteen personalities split from Fox31 and Channel 2/KWGN, its partner station — and many of them left the journalism field, too. In a 2022 interview with Westword, news director McNamara's predecessor, Brian Gregory, saw this development as part of a larger trend.
"You might have heard about it, post-COVID — some are calling it the 'Great Resignation,'" allowed Gregory, who left Fox31 in 2023 to become president and general manager of a station in Virginia. But he also admitted that "our jobs as journalists are tough. And they are not remote. You come to the office to do your work. You get out in the community to report on stories. You cover intense situations, horrific crimes; you’re stuck out in adverse weather conditions for long hours. You work mornings, evenings, overnights, weekends, holidays. So this job can wear on you."
This affliction didn't affect Noël. While at home, she watched coverage of stories that were happy (the Denver Nuggets' NBA championship) and tragic (the murderous attack at a Boulder King Soopers) and wanted nothing more than to help report on what was happening. "The itch was so strong," she says. "I was like, 'Coach, put me out there. I'm ready.'"
This attitude was important to McNamara, who became Fox31's news director last year. "Our anchors don't just sit at a desk," he emphasizes. "They get out and connect with folks — and Christine has a long history of getting involved in community organizations, too."
Although plenty of pundits see TV news as less relevant than it once was in the changing media landscape, McNamara disagrees. "Between Channel 2 and Channel 31, we do over 110 hours a week of local programming, giving information to folks nearly every moment of the day on broadcast and digital platforms, like apps on your phone," he says. "As people's lives have evolved, they less want to make an appointment to watch the news. They want news to be available when they want it, and we provide news and information when you're looking for it, no matter when that may be."
Just as important to McNamara is that these products be trustworthy, no matter a viewer's political ideology. While the station is part of the Fox network, which includes Fox News, it's actually owned by Nexstar, a corporation that doesn't have an especially Fox-y agenda. "Making sure we do objective, quality reporting is engrained in everything we do," he maintains. "We need to report on what's most important in our community, and that's why people continue to seek us out."
Noël echoes these sentiments. "I've worked at ABC affiliates, NBC affiliates, Fox affiliates, and no matter where I've been, I've always believed that as a journalist and a news anchor, there's a huge responsibility to be authentic. Wherever I've worked, I strive for the same level of authenticity and objectivity. That really matters to me."
So, too, does the initial reaction to her reemergence on Denver TV. "I was able to go through a season of my life where I was able to be pregnant privately and deliver my son and learn my footing as a new mom when I wasn't under the spotlight that social media shines on the television world," she says. "But over those two years, I often wondered if anyone would remember me if I ever got my dream job. But so many viewers have been happy to see me again. I feel like Denver has welcomed me with open arms. I'm so glad to be back."
