Conway: ‘I Reached a Point Where I Wanted a Normal Life’

She loved Sally Wiggin. LOVED!

And what Pittsburgher didn’t love Sally Wiggin. The news anchor, who retired in 2018 after 38 years with WTAE, set a journalistic standard that Laurie Conway wished to follow.

“I really did love Sally Wiggin. She was the greatest when I was growing up. Every girl I knew who wanted to be on TV wanted to do the news like Sally Wiggin,” confessed Laurie Conway. “She did it the right way.”

A 2005 graduate of Chartiers Valley High School in Bridgeville, Conway was graduated from Bethany College’s impressive Communications program in 2009. In 2010, Laurie Conway was hired by WTRF TV-7.

“TV was my dream,” Conway reported. “My dream since middle school was being on TV. It’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to be a journalist. I loved the news, the Weather Channel. I loved the news and I loved consuming the news. Everything I did, from middle school to high school to college, everything I did was to get that dream job a the TV station.

“I was fortunate to get hired by WTRF as an overnight producer, and that was the slowest position on the totem pole,” she recalled. “But then I worked my way up over eight-and-a-half years and it was great. My last four-and-a-half years I was the evening anchor were terrific. That’s when Wheeling became my home.”

And that’s when Conway’s priorities changed.

“I reached the point in my broadcast career where I was going to have to move to continue, so I made the decision to stay right here,” Conway explained. “Plus, I reached a point where I wanted a normal life with a normal schedule with normal hours because in TV, you’re pretty much on call most of the time.

“For a lot of years, I worked some pretty funky hours, and I wanted normal. That outweighed everything at that point,” she said. “So, here I am. I do miss TV, and I will always miss it. But I doubt I’d ever go back to it.”

The Chamber Chapter

Kurt Zende took the reins of the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce as the organization’s new president following the Main Street Bank Fantasy in Lights Parade in November 2021 after Erikka Storch resigned from the position to become the executive director of Project BEST.

Zende then hired an assistant in Mike Howard and Conway as his director of marketing and communications, and since the Wheeling Chamber has hosted a plethora of events with the intention to gather and grow.

“Networking is an obvious reason to become a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and those opportunities are there all of the time, but it’s really true that you get out of a membership what you put into it,” Conway said. “We have members that pay their annual dues but they don’t interact very often, but we also have people who are on the other side of that because they are very active on a weekly basis.

“We have a group we call our ‘Chamber Champions’ because they are a group pf young professionals who want to get the word out about their business and all of the business in their (respective) area,” she said. “And, if we have a member who feels they are getting what they want out of their membership, they should give us a call to talk about it what it is they are looking for from their membership. Like I always say, it’s all about growth.”

One event that’s proven popular is the organization’s ‘After Hour’ outings that are hosted by a member business once per month, and as more time passes since pandemic precautions were lifted, the crowd has grown larger.

“Our After Hours events are popular and we’ve had some great ones lately that have been held in really neat places,” Conway said. “Since all of the Covid restrictions were removed, it’s been a gradual process with people coming out a little more over time, and it still a bit difficult to get some people out to our event. It’s understandable after what we went through, but we’ve not experience problems.

“We have several of those After Hour evenings coming up and I’m looking forward to those because I feel, over time, people will see that it’s safe to mingle once again,” she said. “We also have several events coming up where we’ll partner with our Chamber friends from Marshall and Belmont counties because we have to have that regional mindset, that’s for sure.”

As a reporter, she asked the questions. These days, though, Conway often finds herself on the opposite side of the stereotypical Q&A paradigm.

“I do love my work with the chamber and that’s because I feel as if I am learning something new every single day,” she admitted. “I’ve always hated when I’ve felt like I’ve hit a brick wall with the jobs I’ve had. In the past, I’ve felt like there was nothing more to learn, and that’s when I’ve lost that zest.

“Plus, this is not a position I ever saw myself being in when I entered the workforce, so that’s allowed for me to grow in so many different ways. Every day, I learn so much, and I really do love that,” Conway explained. “It’s been a blessing during my first year and I really can’t wait to keep moving forward because we have so many terrific events on our schedule for this spring and summer.”