CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil got a little emotional on air while looking back on his childhood years spent in Miami.
The former CBS Mornings co-host made a stop in the Florida city on Tuesday while visiting different cities as part of his “Live From America Tour,” and chatted with CBS Miami about being born and raised there. “It makes me emotional, it’s so funny,” Dokoupil told the outlet. “You only have one childhood, right?”
“Florida is where I grew up,” Dokoupil explained as he recalled growing up in South Florida. “My grandmother’s here, my father, my mother, my aunts and uncles, cousins, and it’s where I would have spent all of my childhood.”
Michael Tessier/CBS
Dokoupil explained that he and his family moved away from Florida when he was still young, after “my father got in some trouble with business.”
He continued, “We laugh about it now, but he was a drug dealer and he went to jail. It’s kind of a ha-ha moment for us now.”
The abrupt move made Dokoupil feel like he was “robbed of the full Miami experience.”
“I really love it here. People are gonna think this is so crazy, but this should have been my home for the whole stretch,” he said. “To have it and then to lose it, it just kind of rocks me. I didn’t expect to feel that, but whenever I’m here, it really does feel deeply like home and I wish it could have stayed home.”
The emotional moment came a day after Dokoupil made his debut as the anchor of CBS Evening News.
Dokoupil’s first run at the role got off to a rocky start when he flubbed a segment transition as he segued from reporting on the recent capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to another topic involving Sen. Mark Kelly.
“To other news now, to Gov. Walz. No, we’re going to do Mark Kelly,” Dokoupil says in clips reposted on social media and media outlets of the live show, pausing to correct the issue. “First day! First day, big problems here.”
He continues, asking, “Uh, are we going to Kelly here? Or are we going to go to [fellow journalist] Jonah Kaplan?” ahead of a few seconds of silence during the telecast. Dokoupil then recovers, advising the crew that “we’re doing Mark Kelly, possibly demoted from his retired rank of captain in the Navy.”
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Dokoupil was named Evening News anchor last month following polarizing journalistic figure Bari Weiss’ controversial takeover of CBS News. The former daytime show personality recently gave a New Year’s Day address, telling viewers to hold him and the legendary CBS program (previously fronted by Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric, and more) to high journalism standards.
CBS
“I have felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn’t reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life,” he said at the time, vowing that he would prioritize his viewers during his tenure. “My promise to you, today and every time you see me in this chair: you come first. Not advertisers. Not politicians. Not corporate interests. And, yes, that does include the corporate owners of CBS. I report for you.”
He clarified, explaining that “I tell you what I know, when I know it, and how I know it. And when I get it wrong, I’ll tell you that, too. It also means I’m going to talk to everybody, and hold everyone in public life to the very same standard.”
CBS Evening News airs weeknights on CBS.