Judy Markey, the longtime WGN Radio co-host of “Kathy and Judy,” has died at 82.
Markey died Friday, according to her obituary, she chose a voluntary assisted death in Switzerland after years of declining health.
With Kathy O’Malley, she co-hosted the unscripted, call-in midday talk show that Chicago listeners knew as “The Girlfriends.” The program ran on WGN from 1989 to 2009, growing from a Super Bowl-weekend special into a multi-hour weekday franchise that often ranked as the city’s top midday show.
The pair twice won the Gracie Award for best major-market talk show. Markey was already a Chicago media fixture before radio.
She spent 16 years as a syndicated slice-of-life columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and later published novels including The Daddy Clock (1998) and Just Trust Me (2005).
She was inducted into Northwestern’s Medill Hall of Achievement and was named one of Chicago’s “100 Most Influential Women” by Crain’s and one of the “Top 100 Talk Show Hosts” by Talkers magazine.
WGN newscaster Steve Bertrand, a longtime presence on the show, announced her death on air Friday, calling her partnership with O’Malley a 20-year run that “connected with their audience in a deep and trusted way.”