Former longtime Raleigh anchor announces cancer diagnosis, takes time off from TV news job

Donna Gregory, who anchored Raleigh newscasts for more than a decade at two different stations and has been on the air in Wilmington for the past five years, is taking a break to fight cancer.

Gregory announced the diagnosis Friday on her WWAY Facebook page and the station’s website. She began working at WWAY in February 2019 when the station announced she would help out while another anchor, Randy Aldridge, was on medical leave to deal with cancer. Aldridge later returned to work but Gregory stayed on.

“When we think of the moments in life that take our breath away, they are usually bits of beauty: the birth of a baby, a stunning sunset, a perfectly prepared and presented meal,” Gregory wrote in the post.

“But then there are the knock-out punches you don’t see coming that can leave you struggling to catch your breath.

“An unexpected medical diagnosis does that.”

Gregory said she had experienced months of symptoms: coughing, shortness of breath, fatigue and weight loss before getting a biopsy on April 1. At the time, she said, “I believed I would leave the hospital with a prescription and a nutrition plan to quickly get back to perfect health.

“That didn’t happen, however, and now I am trying to breathe through the reality that I was wrong,” she wrote.

“I learned that doctors had found cancer in the tissue samples. It felt like a horse kick to the stomach, a sucker punch from some unseen and sinister opponent.”

Gregory grew up in Atlanta, went to college at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and got her start in television news at stations in Oklahoma and Illinois. According to a biography on Capitol Broadcasting Company’s website, Gregory was a weekday fixture at WRAL from 1988 to 1996. Her face and voice were familiar to local viewers who saw her co-anchor the 5:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.

Gregory also hosted WRAL’s coverage of the Raleigh Christmas Parade, the bio said, and frequently covered the NCAA’s Final Four tournaments for the station when local college teams went to play. A specialist in news features, Gregory hosted a special at WRAL about teen pregnancy in North Carolina called “Kids Having Kids.”

After WRAL

She left WRAL for the then-new UPN, United Paramount Network, at its Minneapolis station, where she anchored the midday newscast until March 1997. She returned to the Triangle to be a weekday anchor at WNCN, a job she held until 2001, when she left to form Donna Gregory Communications.

From the early 2000s until 2008, she served as a correspondent for MSNBC, the “TODAY” show, CNBC, “Dateline” and NBC Nightly News.

She moved to Wilmington with her family in 2012 and launched a business as a health coach while also volunteering locally and serving on the boards of non-profit agencies in the area.

At WWAY, Gregory became a co-host of the station’s “Good Morning Carolina” show, worked as an evening news anchor and reporter and then settled in as anchor of the noon newscast, the station says. A specialist in news features, Gregory also used the station’s once-a-month segment called “Extraordinary People of the Cape Fear” to highlight local residents. Segments have included a woman who teaches tennis to players in wheelchairs, and a 95-year-old Marine veteran.

Gregory’s leave from WWAY

Gregory hasn’t said what type of cancer she has, but said she would be treated in the Wilmington area as well as at research hospitals in the Triangle.

WWAY said Monday she has begun her leave and has no set date yet for her return.

“A friend reminded me that the word ‘cancer’ starts with ‘can’, and I have always believed in possibilities, living in hope and formed by faith,” Gregory wrote. “I will rely on that now more than ever, as I take the deepest breath I can, and take a hard left turn on a road I never saw coming.”

She welcomed prayers for herself and her four children and said, “My wish for you now is that you have moments that leave you breathless in the best way. That you take in all of life’s magnificence. And that you can learn to exhale when you simply have to let go of control.

“Sending love and light to you all.”