From the time he was in kindergarten, Richard Giacovas was obsessed with local television news, especially anchors Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons on “Live at Five” on WNBC.
When he was as young as six, he would put on a jacket and tie, create a news desk along with a hand-drawn city skyline behind it, and “report” the news of the day.
“I took it very seriously. I would even pretend I was throwing to the reporters,” Giacovas, 34, recalled with a laugh.
Giacovas is now living his childhood dream every day as a Fox 5 TV reporter and fill-in anchor.
“I remember the first time I walked on the set,” he said. “This is going full circle back to me sitting in my parents’ living room with a pretend background of the city skyline behind me. Now I’m walking on the set of Fox 5, and I see the skyline of the city, but this time it’s real.”
This should not be surprising for the kid who was sure that he wanted to be one of those reporters he saw every night on TV in his home on Sharon Lane.
“The reporters were on the scene and telling me a story, and for me, I wanted to be them,” he said. “I marveled at how anchors like Chuck and Sue and Bill Ritter did their job so seamlessly. How could I be like them? Plus, I wasn’t into the national broadcast either. It was always local. That’s who I connected with.”
At Osborn School, he wrote for the Osborn Weekly. When he was 15, he reached out to Scarborough, and amazingly, the famous anchor replied and invited Giacovas down to the station for a tour. Scarborough encouraged him to stay in touch, indicating that after he graduated, he might be eligible for an internship at WNBC.
In his junior year at Rye High School, Giacovas took a video journalism class with teacher Vincent Baione, and the die was cast.
“Mr. Baione was instrumental in giving that first push and saying to me that I need to take this seriously and go further,” he said.
Giacovas read the morning announcements over the school TV station every day.
“I was passionate about it, because, ‘Wow, I’m really doing the news,’” he said. “I came into my own once that started. I wasn’t a very popular kid in high school, but once I found my niche, I could feel people were looking at me differently.”
Starting at age 15, he also worked for many years at Rye’s Smoothie King.
“That’s where I got my work ethic,” he said.
After graduating from RHS in 2009, he went to Iona College, where he pursued a degree in mass communications, with a focus in broadcast journalism. Giacovas remembered the suggestion from Scarborough, who was good to his word, and offered him an internship that Giacovas did for four semesters.
After college, Giacovas snagged a job as a production assistant at News 12 Westchester/Hudson Valley. He wasn’t working on air yet when he heard that Carol Burnett was coming to perform at the Westchester County Center.
“I told my boss, ‘I can do this, I can get this interview,’” he said.
He landed the interview and had one of the greatest thrills of his life interviewing the comedy icon. From there, after some corporate restructuring, he was on the air every day.
News 12 provided him with another life thrill: meeting his now-wife Jenna Lee Russo, who was working there as a producer.
“I was just this little PA guy, but we just hit it off,” he said.
For Jenna’s part, she thought he looked like her childhood crush, actor John Stamos, aka Uncle Jesse on “Full House.”
The two wed and now live in Rye with their two children: a daughter, Aria, from a previous relationship of Jenna’s, and a son, Jesse, named after guess who. Jenna is now vice president at Food Bank for New York City and is pregnant with another son, due this month.
From News 12, Giacovas jumped to Fox 5, where he has been for the past seven years. In addition to reporting in the field, he sometimes gets to sit in on the anchor desk.
One assignment allowed him to meet a childhood idol, Yankee announcer John Sterling, who died recently.
“I learned how to do play-by-play because of listening to him as a kid,” Giacovas said.
When the Yankees made their playoff run in 2024, Giacovas was able to interview Sterling in the broadcast booth.
“Talk about pinch-me moment!” he recalled. “I still can’t believe that I sat there during one of his final calls during the playoffs and interviewed him. I got to tell him how much he meant to me as a kid growing up, listening to him. It was such a surreal, out-of-body moment.”
Fox 5 has also launched a streaming show, “Live Newstream,” which he occasionally anchors.
“I do a lot of human-interest stories there,” he said. “Those are really my favorite. I am so touched when I get to do a story on brothers who need a kidney, and we can try to find that match for them, or special needs kids who are learning how to cook for the first time. Those are the stories that really touch my heart and make me realize that I do what I do for a greater purpose.
“I never left Rye. My wife and I said we want to raise our family here, and we will do everything we can to stay here. I knew my parents sacrificed to make sure my sister and I went to a good school district, and now we are doing the same. Rye is a special place, and now I get to watch my kids grow up the way I did.”
The Giacovas family loves to travel to Disney World.
“We live in a very real world as journalists, and we are in the trenches every day,” he said. “We’re dealing with a lot of real-life issues, and a lot is dumped on us. Disney is this magical, fantasy place that we can escape to.”
Giacovas doesn’t know if there is some little kid in Rye watching the news and hoping to be him, but if so, he urges them to keep up with all the changes in the business.
“Learn how to do everyone’s job,” he said. “If you want to be a reporter, if you want to be an anchor, if you want to be a producer, whoever’s job you don’t have, learn how to do it. When I was coming up, I produced, edited, shot, wrote, reported, and now I anchor. When you have more tools in your toolbox, you can say, ‘Here’s why I’m more valuable, because we don’t know what’s coming next.’”
Maybe because he dreamed of this job for so long, Giacovas is not jaded.
“I do not take my job for granted, because a lot of people dream of doing what I do every day,” he said. “I’m a fulfilled and lucky guy.”
