Joel Daly
American journalist

Joel Daly (August 21, 1934 – October 22, 2020) was an American news anchor, most known for serving as an anchor for WLS-TV (an ABC-affiliate) in Chicago, Illinois, for 38 years from 1967 to 2005. Daly served as co-anchor on the 4 pm news broadcast alongside Linda Yu from January 1985 until his retirement in May 2005. Daly was inducted into the Silver Circle, a group of elite Chicago broadcasters, in 2003. Following his retirement from news broadcasting in 2005, from March 2007 until October 2013, Daly served as spokesperson for Chicago's Cook County federal courthouse.
Early life
Joel Daly was born August 21, 1934, in Great Falls, Montana, and was raised in Washington state. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1956.
Career
Four years after finishing college, Daly joined WJW-TV in Cleveland in early 1960. Daly served as co-anchor with Doug Adair, and the two became the first co-anchor news team in the United States.
WLS–TV Chicago (1967–2005)
In 1967, both Daly and Adair were hired by WBKB-TV in Chicago. However, Adair stayed in Cleveland for personal and contractual reasons.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6213349. VIAF identifies the subject as 308181262. The Library of Congress control number is no2014041464. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2020, 1967 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joel Daly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.