Debby Knox, a 48-year broadcasting veteran and 4-time Emmy Award winner, realized her aptitude for news at a young age.
Growing up in a small Michigan town, she was always curious about what was going on around her and devoured the two newspapers her parents received daily in the driveway. As a 4th grader, the JFK assassination jolted her into noticing what was happening in the world around her. In 8th grade, she founded a current events club at her middle school.
Armed with a communications degree from the University of Michigan where she briefly worked on the Michigan Daily, she began her broadcasting career in 1976 with WAAM Radio in Ann Arbor. She then moved to television in Notre Dame at WNDU and then to WSJV in Elkhart.
In 1980, WISH-TV in Indianapolis became her home where she was a medical and investigative reporter and co-anchor on the CBS affiliate’s noon news. She soon became a beloved anchor on the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts until 2013 when she thought she was retiring after 33 years.
Instead, WTTV lured her back to the Indianapolis anchor desk in 2015 for another 8 years at CBS4.
Over her illustrious career, Debby has interviewed Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, and former First Lady Barbara Bush.
Other notable sit-downs include former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev; Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Desmond Tutu; Boston Celtics Coach Brad Stevens; and authors John Green and Anne Patchett.
Traveling internationally, Debby interviewed Suzanne Mubarak, first lady of Egypt, and covered the Indiana National Guard’s peacekeeping duties in Bosnia. In Mexico City, she reported on a global school started by Indianapolis philanthropist Christel DeHaan.
She has won two UPI first place awards for documentaries, is a first-place winner in the Society of Professional Journalists for medical reporting, earned a Silver Circle Honor from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the AP Hall of Fame.
A recipient of the Sagamore of the Wabash Distinguished Hoosier Award, she has been honored six times as Indianapolis Woman Magazine’s top choice for local female TV anchor. She received the Barrett Award from the Indiana Psychological Association and is in the Hall of Fame in her hometown of Edwardsburg, Mich.
One of her proudest accomplishments is competing in a powerlifting competition while reporting on her own 60-pound weight loss journey. It’s not every journalist whose personal story includes deadlifting 185 pounds at 58 years old!
Married for 37 years to psychologist Richard Tirman until his death in 2019, she has two children, Michael Tirman, an attorney in Chicago, and Anna Kidwell, a nurse practitioner at Community Health, and one granddaughter. She enjoys traveling with her family, especially skiing in Colorado, and now shares her life with partner Richard Howard.
She gives back to the League of Women Voters and supports PANCAN, which increases awareness of pancreatic cancer, a disease of which her sister, Lisa, is a survivor. She belongs to Trinity Episcopal Church and supports St. Richards Episcopal School, Cathedral High School, and Butler University.
