What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [18]
In most relationships, the sides begin as exemplars of polite, reasonable behavior and only later do the shields drop and the irritating flaws materialize. But Jenny and I never went through the poseur phase. Our relationship started badly; she disliked me long before she liked. And at the Olympics, I had seen every Jenny there was. Tired Jenny. Crying Jenny. Tough Jenny. Neither of us was going to be surprised by the other because we already knew each other so well.
Months of bicoastal dating unfolded. We never went more than two without seeing each other. Once, when Jenny was sick in New York and I was in San Francisco, I called ten restaurants in Manhattan trying to find one that would deliver chicken soup to her apartment as a surprise. (I found one; they added a brownie, too.)
Jenny was the first person who made me think of someone other than myself. Before she came into my life, I was only about me and my work. All you had to do was check out my wardrobe. I had NBC hats, NBC T-shirts, NBC jackets, NBC backpacks. And I wore that stuff constantly. But Jenny quickly came to mean so much to me that I pledged I would never do anything to mess up the relationship I had finally convinced her to have. “I’ll never break up with you,” I told her. “It will never come from me.”
Every decision I made was geared to keeping her and making sure she kept me. Jenny will tell you that from the moment we reconnected years after California, I was a model of thoughtfulness, which folks at 30 Rock will consider headline news. One time, before we became a serious couple, I was invited to an out-of-town wedding and asked Jenny if she would like to join me. When she said yes, I made sure our hotel room had two beds. With anybody else, I would not have thought of being as gentlemanly. Even killer producers can be softened.
Our two-city relationship could never work for long, of course, because there were too many sad airport farewells. The only choice was to do something I had never done, which was put the personal ahead of the professional by moving to New York. I did not care what job I landed as long as it was with NBC and I was with Jenny.
Having been at big local news stations, I assumed my résumé would induce salivation in New York, but nobody at the network seemed impressed, nor did anyone at the local station, WNBC. So one day, I sat down with an executive for the little-sister cable network, MSNBC, which at that time was based not at 30 Rock but in Secaucus, just across the Hudson River.
The MSNBC executive had no job either. Maybe later. I was being escorted out of his office when I blurted out that I’d like to talk with Phil Griffin, who was then the cable network’s vice president of prime time. We had known each other at the Today show, where he was a producer and I a college intern, so Phil agreed to talk to the supplicant. But he only half listened. I was getting nowhere. He launched into an autopilot seminar about how cable news is more opinionated than broadcast. I didn’t mention that I found cable news unwatchable. Finally, Phil asked why I was moving back east.
“I’m dating Jenny Blanco,” I said.
“You’re dating Jenny Blanco! Oh my God! I love her! I hated that she left!”
Jenny, remember, had worked for MSNBC before switching to the New York local station. Phil regarded her as a smart, serious, levelheaded goddess. If she was dating me, I must be a superior being. “I trust her judgment any day,” Phil says now. Immediately his enthusiasm for my application rose, doors opened, and before long I had an offer to be a senior producer of an MSNBC show called