Dan Ponce
American television journalist

Dan Ponce (born December 7, 1976, in Denver, Colorado) is an American television journalist for WGN-TV, radio talk show host on WLS/890 and founder of the a cappella group Straight No Chaser.
Early life
Dan Ponce was born on December 7th, 1976 in Denver, Colorado to parents Ann and Phil Ponce. His father is Phil Ponce, a Chicago television journalist who hosts Chicago Tonight. He was raised in Wilmette, Illinois. Growing up, Dan was a baritone singer, as well as being a good whistler, being able to whistle and hum a song at the same time and switch between the two while making a song. His brother Anthony Ponce also can do this skill.
Ponce attended New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Illinois. As of 2017, he lived in Glencoe, Illinois after living in Irving Park in Chicago.
Career and background
At Indiana University Bloomington in Bloomington, Indiana, Ponce was the founder of the a cappella group Straight No Chaser in 1996. A 1998 performance went viral on YouTube when it was a new site in 2007.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Dan Ponce” is american television journalist. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ponce, American and television, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5214214. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 2017, 1996 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dan Ponce” 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.