Morning news takes an enormous physical toll. Starting her shift at 2:30 a.m. at FOX 13 Seattle (then Q13 FOX), Dueweke worked on a reverse circadian rhythm for nine consecutive years. Mertz worked standard corporate tech hours, meaning the couple had to actively engineer time together.
Dinner frequently happened at 4:30 p.m. Social outings were scheduled weeks ahead to accommodate rigid sleep windows. Dueweke often quipped that the secret to a resilient marriage on morning television came down to separate alarm clocks, mutual respect for blackout curtains, and deliberate weekend retreats. When Dueweke accepted an evening co-anchor chair at KFOX14 in El Paso in 2023, the family schedule inverted completely. Instead of sleeping through dinner, she was now anchoring through it.
The move brought different trade-offs. The desert Southwest offered warmer winters and an opportunity to lead local investigative coverage, yet the rapid operational transformations inside mid-market television soon forced another hard look at sustainable career longevity.
