GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — It’s been a long time since John Keating delivered a sportscast in Grand Rapids but it’s obvious he hasn’t been forgotten.
“We got a Lakehouse in Grand Haven,” he says. “I’m walking down Washington Avenue and a guy stops me and says I did the "Sports Challenge" against his dad."
Keating couldn’t help but shake his head in amazement. The encounter happened last summer, close to 40 years after he played the man’s father in a televised game of horseshoes. Back in those days, the current Fox Sports Detroit anchor was working at WZZM. It was his first television job and looking back, the 63-year-old admits, he was a bit raw.
“Like anything else you grow into it,” he explains. “You sort of gain some confidence, and you develop a style for better or for worse, and I think that happened to me.”
The City of Grand Rapids was fortunate it did as Keating soon developed a style all his own. The aforementioned "Sports Challenge" series became a huge hit thanks to his personality and to a lesser extent, the fact he rarely beat anyone he faced.
“I have no problem looking silly as my wife (who he actually met while working in Grand Rapids) will attest.”
Keating spent five years working in Grand Rapids, but if you tried searching through our archives at 13 On Your Side to find his work, you’d probably have some trouble. That’s because when Keating worked at WZZM, he didn’t go by the name of 'John Keating' and that all stems from his first job in broadcasting in radio.
"They already had a guy named Jon on the air staff and so basically, the program director said, ‘You are now Steve Knight,’” Keating explains."So I was Steve Knight on the radio and I was Steve Knight on TV."
The name didn’t follow Keating when he left a job in Denver in 1985. He’s gone on to bigger things, but he says none of it would happened had it not been for getting his foot in the door at 13 On Your Side.
"Everybody was sort of pushing each other, helping each other, and it was the greatest time,” he remembers.
Sure, Keating had an impact on Grand Rapids but clearly, that feeling is more than mutual.
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