WKYT reporter Miranda Combs announces her departure. Her new career? State government.
Investigative reporter and WKYT anchor Miranda Combs announced this week that she will be leaving the station for a new career.
Combs will become the director of communications for incoming Secretary of State Michael Adams, who will be sworn in next week.
Combs announced her departure on social media, saying, “My last day @wkyt will be Friday.”
She told viewers: “I’ll miss telling your stories. It was a privilege to document your frustrations, heartbreaks, loves, losses and achievements. I hope my work helped some of you and informed others.”
Viewers were quick to congratulate Combs on her move and to thank her for reports over the years that had helped them.
After graduating from Florida State University in 2001 with a major in communications and minor in journalism, Combs began her career at the CBS affiliate in Joplin, Mo.
Combs joined WKYT in 2002, working as a reporter focused on investigative pieces and anchoring, which she called her dream job.
“I grew up watching the station and used to have my dad drive out of his way just to pass the station tower on Winchester Road,” Combs said in her station bio.
She took a break, beginning in 2009 for the birth of her sons, Calvin, born in 2010, and McCoy, born in 2013. She rejoined the station in September 2013.
In November, she announced that she and her husband, John Harvey, were adopting a baby girl. The adoption of Etta Jo Harvey was finalized just before Christmas, according to Combs’ Twitter posts.
Many viewers followed her adoption journey online and via a podcast that she did with fellow WKYT anchors Victor Puente and Andrea Walker.
Combs said that she and her husband had considered adoption before and decided to move forward last summer.
“I don’t know if it’s being 40 now ... but something came over us,” Combs told the Herald-Leader’s Karla Ward. “A lot of the stories that I focus on have been (about) the foster care system, adoption.”
On Dec. 20, Combs posted photos of her baby girl’s face for the first time, saying it was “GOTCHA DAY!! If I ever question God’s grace, all I have to do is look at this baby girl. 75 days between the first picture and second picture. It’s our honor to legally show you our daughter, Etta Jo Zariah Harvey.”
Combs said Monday that she decided to take the new job because after years in TV “what hit me was it wasn’t the TV I loved any more, it was helping people. It became more of a passion than getting it done to be on at 6 o’clock tonight.”
So she looked for a new career that would give her that but also allow her to spend more time with her family.
“There’s no bigger blessing than being able to walk into somebody’s living room, throw yourself on their couch and say, ‘what’s wrong?’ And I am going to miss that more than I can explain,” she said. “One reason I picked this new path is that that piece of it is still there. I’ll still be helping people.”
This story was originally published December 31, 2019 at 9:33 AM.
