© 2024 WLRN
MIAMI | SOUTH FLORIDA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Longtime South Florida Broadcaster, Former WLRN Anchor Kelley Mitchell Dies At 58

Carl Juste
/
Miami Herald
Kelley Mitchell is pictured with her Corgi, Oscar, in her backyard in Miami Shores. She wrote essays about Oscar's chemotherapy for the Miami Herald and WLRN.

Longtime South Florida broadcast journalist Kelley Mitchell died Sunday. Mitchell was 58 years old.

Mitchell had battled cancer in the past, but at this time the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office has not confirmed the cause of death.

Mitchell, an Oklahoma City native, came to South Florida in 1991, according to her biography. She worked as an anchor and reporter for WSVN-TV (FOX) and WPLG-TV (ABC). Most recently, Mitchell had been substitute hosting at WIOD.

From 2011 through early 2015 Mitchell worked as WLRN’s afternoon news anchor. She was recognized by both the Florida AP Broadcasters Awards and the SPJ Sunshine State Awards for her newscasts.

As news of Mitchell’s death spread on Monday, social media filled up with personal stories of her impact.

“I'm old enough now to know not everyone we look up to as kids are actually great people. Kelley was,” former Miami Herald reporter and South Florida native Diana Moskovitz wrote on Facebook. “South Florida isn't the same place without her.”

“[Mitchell] was a groundbreaker. She taught me the ropes of television in Miami,” tweeted national television and radio personality Jillian Barberie, who worked with Mitchell at WSVN. “She was fearless and hilarious.”

“She had my back during Hurricane Andrew,” Barberie wrote to WLRN, “I was a 23-year-old weathercaster from Canada... When I went to air with an older man who was talking all over me and being very assertive and dismissive of anything I had to offer, Kelley chimed in and quietly handed him a note. He took it and read it and he stopped.”

Later, Barbarie asked Mitchell what the note said: Some version of “let the lady speak,” Barberie remembers.

Viewers and listeners developed deeply personal connections with Kelley Mitchell and, in turn, Mitchell allowed viewers and listeners into her private life. In 2003, she publicly shared her bout with breast cancer on WPLG.

“I’m not sure I really ‘battled’ breast cancer,” she would later write, “as much as it battled me. But after a year of two chemotherapies, radiation and surgery, cancer and I agreed to a draw. We went back to our respective corners, both tired of this fight.”

In 2014, with her trademark wit, cynicism and sensitivity, Mitchell wrote an essay in the Miami Herald about watching her dog (“my Love Bucket, my Oscar”) deal with his own bout of cancer.

“We're waiting for Oscar's tests to show if it has spread. He's waiting to see if another avocado has fallen from the tree,” she wrote. “And now, while I'm writing this, I'm listening to him snore so peacefully. An occasional yippy yap from a doggie dream.”

Kelley Mitchell is survived by her husband Kirk Wade and two corgis, Oscar and Felix.

To hear Kelley Mitchell's one-of-a-kind voice and style, listen to her interview with the Miami Herald's Howard Cohen about when the Beatles came to Miami here.

More On This Topic