For 39 years, Ken Siemek has been presence in living rooms in Lincoln and across the state of Nebraska as Chief Meteorologist for 10/11 television. After 44 years at 10/11, Siemek retired at the end of October. Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson sat down with his longtime broadcast friend to talk about humble beginnings and a remarkable career.
Dale Johnson: So much has changed. Think back to when both you and I both got into this business.
Ken Siemek: Yes, it was the 1800s.
Johnson: You came to Lincoln in what year?
Siemek: Oh man, it was for college. It would have been 1979.
Johnson: Yeah, I can remember you doing news. I would run into you at news events.
Siemek: I was an intern. I was at UNL in the broadcasting department, and Dr. Mayeux came up to me one day and said, ‘How would you like to interview for an internship at Channel 10?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Let me go down there and apply.’ And Don Wright, God bless his soul, was the news director, and he hired me as the intern. I would go in in the mornings, Monday through Friday. This is how I started, at like, 3 a.m. and help Steve Stick, Larry Hall and Linda Anterline. And so that was the morning show. I helped produce the morning show. And so then they let me start covering, I would go out and shoot some things. They teach me how to run the cameras and I would do a little bit of reporting, not very much, because I was just a punk. And so did a lot of that for a year and a half. And so then the internship became a job. Then the weekend weather guy quit. And so they asked me if I would fill in doing the weekend weather until they could hire somebody full time to do the weather for that Saturday and early Sunday show, and so I said I would give it a shot.
Johnson: Do you get linked to Mel Mains more than anybody else?
Siemek: I think so. The conversations get fewer and fewer as we get older and older, because Mel retired in 1995. It was July of 1995, so what are we talking about, 30 years ago? You got to be a little bit of a veteran to remember those days. But there are still a lot of people, a lot of people that will come up to me and say something about it, and how we really enjoyed how you guys, the tête-à-tête, between the two of you, and the rapport you had and stuff, and so that that’s still I’m probably, maybe more connected with Deb, because we ended up married now for 33 years. But Mel comes up a lot.
Johnson: There are people that recognize you as someone other than a weather person on 10/11 because there are some messages that I found on the internet. This is Stephanie: I met him in seventh grade at Irving Middle School, and again during take our Daughter to Work Day. Such a nice guy. My son met Ken at Husker Harvest Days in 1987, got his autograph, took it to school for show and tell. Someone else says they grew up three blocks from your parents, and I think he taught half the neighborhood kids to play baseball. That was Ryan. So you’re known, you’re not just a weather guy.
Siemek: Oh, well, that’s good to know.
Johnson: You’re humble. You’re very humble, and you thank people around you for making you better.
Siemek: Well, I appreciate that, and those are very kind things to say. And I guess I’ve never really thought of it that way, I’ve just always been me, and that’s who “me” is. I guess we all grew up. There were seven of us in our family, and mom and dad. So there’s nine kids in the Siemek family in Columbus. We’re south of the track, so we’re on the poor side of town. And we thought we had everything. And I think a lot of that comes from my mother, who was such an empathetic person. As little as we had, she was always more concerned about the people in the church that had less than we did and that. If I in some small way, have shown empathy, or have had a God-given humbleness that is just part of who I am. It comes from her, and it comes from my family. And so when I think about the good life, I think about that’s how we were raised. To me, that’s the way I look at it. And so I don’t deserve any credit, or don’t want any credit for how I turned out.
Johnson: I talked to firefighters, retired firefighters, and I asked them, when the siren goes off, are they going to miss it? And every single one of them say, yes, they will flinch. They will look around. And so they left firefighting. Firefighting didn’t leave them. What about you when the clouds roll in and it gets nasty and you hear a siren?
Siemek: I’m going to have to get back to you on that, because I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to feel. I’ll tell you one thing at this age, and someday you’ll be as old as I am now, and you’ll understand what I’m saying. The stress of the severe weather nights and those things have taken their toll after 39 years. So I’m not going to miss that. I’m not going to miss feeling the responsibility of, ‘Oh gosh, you know this is going to be another 14 hour day,’ or I should go in this weekend, because there’s this threat or that threat, and the other threat, those kinds of things I’m not going to miss.
Johnson: More golfing, is that what your retirement looks like?
Siemek: More bad golfing? Yes. We’ve played some for a long time, Deb and I, we try to get out every weekend, and then if we’re on vacation or if we’ve got a day off, we play during the week too. It’s gotten to the point where she’s better than I am, so it’s not near as much fun as it used to be when I could beat her.
Johnson: This has been fun. Enjoy retirement.
Siemek: Thank you.