End of an era: Celebrating 21 years of Donna Apidone on CapRadio's Morning Edition

Today marks the end of an era for CapRadio: Donna Apidone’s final day hosting Morning Edition. She ends her tenure after some 21 years of waking up early with us.

For many in the Sacramento region, Donna has been the first voice they heard in the morning: a steady voice during some of the biggest moments of the past two decades. 

"People hear your calm, measured, reassuring voice and feel that, even on those mornings when the news isn’t good, everything will be fine," her colleague and Morning Edition partner Steve Milne told her recently.

On her final day, we at CapRadio are celebrating Donna and everything she has brought to the station and the Sacramento region. Below find an audio tribute and conversation with Donna from Steve Milne, and an in-depth conversation between her and Insight host Vicki Gonzlaez.

A conversation with Donna Apidone and Steve Milne

CapRadio Morning Edition Anchor Steve Milne recently sat down with Donna to discuss her 21 years hosting the show. Here's an edited version of their conversation. To hear the full conversation, click play above.

Steve Milne records a conversation with Donna Apidone in August of 2022.CapRadio

Steve: You're not calling this a retirement, right?

Donna: No, I'm not going to retire. Absolutely not. I'm calling this my graduation. You know, it gives a little bit more hope for the future.

Steve: We'll talk later about what that graduation entails. You've been a sort of constant companion for more than two decades. People hear your calm, measured, reassuring voice and feel that even on those mornings when the news isn't good, everything will be fine.

But hosting is far from the only thing Donna has done for CapRadio over the last couple of decades. We're going to share some audio clips illustrating the wide span of her work.

Donna Apidone on stage at the Sacramento Jazz Festival.CapRadio File

We're going to start with what I think might have been one of your very first times on the air at CapRadio. This is from 1999. So a year after you were hired to be the radio station's development director, meaning the person in charge of raising money. Here you are with jazz director Gary Vercelli during one of our live broadcasts from the annual Sacramento Jazz Jubilee.

Steve: It was that quick wit that convinced the station, "We need to put Donna on the radio every day." And we did.

Of course, being on the air every day means it's not as easy getting out in the field and reporting. But I know you love doing that. And when you were able to, wow, you created some great radio journalism.

Here's a clip from a piece you did on the Manzanar National Historic Site, where more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II. 

Donna: Some of those sounds still get to me. They're still very emotional, especially going down to Manzanar and meeting people who were related to the families who had to live there for a while. Very touching material.

Steve: You've interviewed some accomplished authors over the years as part of CapRadio reads. That includes the late Irish-American teacher and writer Frank McCourt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, Angela's Ashes.  

Donna: It was very touching. In fact, a couple of years after Frank McCourt died, a friend and I went to Limerick in Ireland, where his family was based, and that was really what he wrote about in Angela's Ashes. So yeah, sometimes you get to follow up on books and authors in a big way. 

Steve: You've also interviewed some pretty great singers and musicians over the years. One of my favorites is the piece you did on Linda Ronstadt. 

Donna: Well, I've been pretty spoiled because I've been able to interview musicians I really like. So that's made all the difference in the world. It's just been so much fun to talk to people, people whose music I enjoy and get to hear how they live and what they do and how they think.

Steve: Donna, listeners are not only going to miss waking up to your voice every morning. They're also going to miss this.

Steve: Of course, those are strung together, taken out of context. Little quips that you said during Morning Edition, reacting to the stories that you heard.

Well, Donna, why are you calling this a graduation and not a retirement? People want to know, what are you going to be up to?

Donna: I wish I knew. I know part of it. I know I'm going to be doing some writing and producing and interviewing for a couple of organizations, some I can't talk about yet, one I can tell you about. It's a digital magazine that's produced by a PBS station in the Midwest. Well, we all know how to work remotely, so I don't have to leave my house to do that work in the Midwest. But people can actually read some of that online every month or so. And, I don't know, open to ideas.

You can follow Donna's work on her website, DonnaApidone.com

Donna Apidone interviews the curator of the popular Historic Sacramento City Cemetery "Lantern Tours."CapRadio file

"I have the best job in town"

Donna also spoke with Insight host Vicki Gonzalez about her time at CapRadio, what's next, and the responsibility she felt speaking to listeners every morning, no matter the news.

Vicki: Why and why now?

Oh, well, first I have to say, I have the best job in town. I don't hesitate for a moment, maybe the best job in the state. I just, I absolutely love my job. I'm not leaving for any reasons that have to do with anything other than that because I love it. It was a hard decision to make and really, it took me several years of thinking it over and how do I want to do this and when? And I never thought that I'd be part of what we've been calling the great resignation. But it's time. Twenty-one years. I have raised a generation of listeners, people who were born when I started doing Morning Edition have or will soon graduate from college. That's mind-boggling to me.

What are you going to miss most?

I'm going to miss the people I work with. You know, I've worked with Steve Milne for all these years. He is fabulous. He is just the most amazing person. I'm really going to miss the partnership that I have with him. I'm going to miss the connection that I have with our listeners because, you know, you go in the community and there's always somebody you run into who's talking about CapRadio or wants to know about Cap Radio. It's a very personal connection that everyone here has with everyone who's listening, so I'll miss that. But the whole CapRadio team, we have the most amazing people who work here. Some are technical, some are writers, some are, you know, all these different talents that our team has. And as you said, just walking in the building and seeing all these people, I'll miss everybody here so much.

There are some things about radio too, in general, that I'll miss, like the craft of radio. You know, we have certain things that we do that are traditions or unwritten rules that we do. And the craft of radio has always been really important to me. There's something that we do called hitting the post. It's when you end what you're saying and you end it at a precise time because the network comes up next and you don't want to bump into that other voice. That's called hitting the post. And I can truly tell you that through my entire career, every time I hit the post, I get a rush from it.

Watch a video CapRadio produced about Donna Apidone's reflection on her role at the station in 2011.

So with any job, is there anything that you won't miss?

My cousin asked me what the first thing would be that I would do after I finish, and I said, I'm going to take those alarm clocks and throw them out of the window. I have a couple of alarms on my phone, a couple of actual alarm clocks. I set four alarms because I'm terrified I'll oversleep. I will not miss getting up early.

Well, take us behind the scenes. What surprises people about your job?

I don't think that people know that I stand up all day. So it's about 6 hours that I'm standing in that studio. But I'm also dancing way early through the morning and it's harder to do that when you're sitting down. There's a lot of great music that plays during Morning Edition, and I just love to bop around that studio and enjoy that. We also have a tradition in radio that you talk to just one person. You don't talk to a big crowd of all the people because that's too much to fathom. But if you talk to one person and imagine who that is and what they're doing, then you make a different kind of connection. So I do that all the time too. When people say, I feel like you're talking just to me, I am.

Donna Apidone with Mickey Hart, drummer with the Grateful Dead.CapRadio File

So take us back before CapRadio, like where you grew up and what really got you into being interested in broadcasting and radio.

I grew up in Maryland, in Ohio. I didn't come to California until 1998 when I started here at the station, but I remember being intrigued. Nine, 10 years old, being intrigued. It was music that I was listening to on the radio. I didn't really think about being in any kind of news coverage at that time, but I was I was intrigued by it very early at a pretty young age.

What drew you to CapRadio?

I was hired as director of development, the chief fundraiser. Well, we've grown so much, I would never be able to do that job now. I had a background in producing on-air fund drives, and I had a leadership role in a national fundraising initiative. So it looked like I would be a very good person to have that job.

CapRadio staff in 1999. Donna Apidone is in top row, middle.CapRadio file

But after two and a half years of that, I know I'd be happy to go back on air and the Morning Edition job was open at that point. It's really funny because some of the people I worked with at that time said, 'Oh, I don't know, are you going to go to host Morning Edition? That's really going to hurt your career.' But I think it's worked out okay.

What moments will you remember forever while hosting Morning Edition?

StoryCorps is a great example. Now, after StoryCorps, there is a promo for All Things Considered, but it used to be that I was the first thing that someone would hear after StoryCorps. I was always crying. So that's that was one of them. Everything in COVID just broke me down. There were so many times when I just couldn't even talk as I was crying. Those stories were were just so hard for all of us to hear. We have to remain neutral no matter what the news is, no matter what our personal feelings are. Election results, you know how we feel about any kind of political issue or any social issue. And just maintaining a steady voice through all of that has been something that I've had to keep in mind and had to remember. I love stories about immigration because of my own family. I'm always listening to those and they're very those are moments for me.

There is one other moment that I have to tell you about, Gina Spadafori, who is just the pet queen. They used to do a segment on Insight all the time and she'd bring in animals and one time she'd bring in baby goats. Who doesn't love baby goats?

Donna Apidone holds a baby goat at CapRadio's headquarters in Sacramento, Calif. on March 23, 2016Andrew Nixon / CapRadio

The topics can be so far-ranging. I love StoryCorps, but it's absolutely usually a tear-jerker. I mean, there's so much responsibility and skill and listening that comes with what you do every morning.

Yeah. It feels like a big responsibility. Sometimes I think of it as the person who wants to connect with everyone listening, depending on what's going on in the world. So some days, yeah, we're dancing because there's happy news going on on Morning Edition. Some days it's tragic news. And that's when I put my arm around you. You know, that's when I have to be very present with what's going on with every listener. It's connection. It's empathy. There are also a lot of people who complain about one thing or another about the station. So we have to be generous in listening and sorting through those things, too. But it's just compassion. It's empathy.

Donna Apidone addresses a crowd at Belle Coolidge Library on Sept. 10, 2015 to kick off Story Corps in Sacramento.Andrew Nixon / CapRadio

A lot of thoughtfulness on your part, which in turn means you get a lot of trust from people. What does that trust mean to you personally?

It's really intimidating. At first I had to learn how to deal with that over time. But after a while you step into it. You say, ‘Oh, if this is my job, if this is what people expect of me, then this is what I have to do.’ And you step into that role and you get it done. So it's, you know, it gets easier. It's also an enormous compliment when somebody says they trust you and you want to live up to that. And I try to live up to it every day.