“We barely knew each other at that point,” says McGilvery, who is now a weekday morning anchor at WTIC-TV (FOX61) in Hartford, Connecticut. “We were in school for two weeks and somebody came into a class early that Tuesday morning and said something is going on. And the professor just sat there with us, and we talked about it, and we went back to our dorm and you could see smoke from the top of Hughes Hall.”

For McGilvery, that time in his college career, while traumatic, was also one that brought him and his classmates closer together and reminded them of why they had chosen to go to Fordham.

“I think in that moment, you made friends that have lasted a lifetime, and you were immediately reminded of your responsibility to lead with conscience, to be a critical thinker, to be open to a world that was larger than what many of us knew at that point. … People were donating blood, everybody was jumping up to do what they could. And you really saw immediately the character of a class come together to do some really incredible things.”

McGilvery majored in communications and political science at Fordham College at Rose Hill, and he joined United Student Government (USG) on campus, eventually becoming president. On the first anniversary of the attack, USG, along with the recently graduated Class of 2002, unveiled a 9/11 Memorial in the Finlay Gardens, near the Bathgate Avenue entrance to campus. (The memorial was also unveiled at the Lincoln Center campus.) And as a member of his Class of 2005 Jubilee Committee, he and his fellow committee members raised class gift funds for Fordham’s 9/11 Scholarship for their 15th reunion in 2020.

“It was a small gesture,” he said, “but hopefully one that’s packed with a lot of gratitude for the fact that we got through that experience together, and in a small way might be able to help someone else.”

Classes, Clubs, and Internships Set a Career Path

As an undergraduate, McGilvery also worked as a Rose Hill Society campus tour guide for prospective students and their families,  and he was a member of Fordham Nightly News, the student broadcast journalism club and news show that launched during his senior year and gave him some of his earliest broadcasting experience.

Meanwhile, he took full advantage of Fordham’s proximity to news outlets, completing internships at Good Morning America, 20/20, and ABC’s Primetime.

“I knew from an early age that I wanted to get into the news and there was literally no better place in the planet to do that,” McGilvery says of Fordham’s New York City location.

While his communications classes gave him the journalistic foundation for his future career—he cites Paul Levinson, Ph.D., and CBS News executive and correspondent Joseph Dembo as particularly inspiring professors—McGilvery also points to his political science courses as shaping his ability to parse difficult topics and engage in conversations around them.

“Fordham had great debate,” he recalls. “We talked about everything. We talked about world events in political science classes. Fordham had that rare ability to bring together people from all walks of life.”

And through the study abroad program Semester at Sea, which brought him to 10 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in 100 days during the fall of his junior year, McGilvery says he was exposed to the world in ways that had a lasting influence on him.

“There’s no better way to see the diversity of the world than through something like that,” he says. “It also brought me back to campus [ready]to ramp up my experience, having been exposed to an even larger world.”

Telling the Extraordinary Stories of Everyday People

After graduating in 2005, McGilvery worked for a year in health care communications, before deciding to get a master’s degree in journalism at Emerson College in Boston, where he continued to hone his broadcasting skills.

Upon completing that two-year program, he began his first broadcast job in 2008 at WVIR-TV (NBC29) in Charlottesville, Virginia. He says he chose that job over one in Bangor, Maine, because having grown up in Massachusetts and stayed in the Northeast for school, he wanted to try living in a different part of the country. As a reporter for the station, he was tasked with writing, reporting, filming, and editing his stories.

McGilvery spent three years in Charlottesville before moving to Burlington, Vermont, in 2011 to take a job as an anchor, reporter, and talk show host at WCAX-TV (CBS3). He anchored the nighttime broadcast there with co-anchor Jennifer Costa, FCRH ’06, and on the daily afternoon talk show he hosted, he covered “everything from politics to sports to cooking to entertainment,” he said.

Then, in 2017, he began his current role at FOX61, where he anchors the news desk from 4 to 6 a.m. He is now back in the station’s studio for that early morning shift after eight months of anchoring from his living room during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 6 to 11 a.m., he does field reporting, traveling around Connecticut to tell what he calls the “good news stories of the people who live in our region.” And although he also covers more hard news events like President Biden speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s commencement this past May, McGilvery says it is the everyday stories of people doing good that he relishes more than anything.

“Everyday people have extraordinary stories,” he says. “I have the privilege of an incredible platform to share really interesting people and innovative ideas and folks who may not otherwise get that exposure.”

McGilvery credits Fordham with helping to shape him both professionally and personally, noting that he is still close friends with many of his classmates and that he brings his school spirit to work, asking his co-anchors to wear maroon with him on Fordham Giving Day.

“There are few experiences in my life that rival my four years on campus, and I know the richness it has brought to my life, to my friendships, to who I am today,” he says. “And I feel privileged to share a little bit of that with other people.”

What are you most passionate about?
I love to try new things, and I’ll do just about anything once. I [recently]flew in a Chinook helicopter and trained with the Connecticut National Guard. Other weeks, it’s anything from aerial yoga and rock climbing to lacing up with Disney on Ice. I also do a lot of volunteer work with the Down Syndrome Association of Connecticut and got the chance to sponsor an assistance dog named Morrissey through the nonprofit NEADS World Class Service Dogs.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My dad told me that people are lucky to have one positive experience with someone else during the course of the day, and why not be that person? My mom taught me not to sell myself short and that a handwritten thank-you note still means a lot.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
I made some of my best friends in Hughes Hall and never missed an opportunity to recruit new Ram fans on Eddies Parade. I also studied abroad while at Fordham and loved the Great Wall of China and going on safari in Tanzania.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Right now, I’m reading Fraternity by Diane Brady. It looks at the bold leadership of a Jesuit priest who worked to bring a group of young Black men to the College of the Holy Cross following MLK’s death in the 1960s.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Dennis Ahern, FCRH ’67, assistant principal for professional development and supervision at Fordham Prep. I met Mr. Ahern while I was at Fordham with his two children, Kevin, FCRH ’05, and Caitlin FCRH ’08. For almost 50 years, Mr. Ahern has mentored generations of young people in the traditions of Jesuit education. He inspires people to be curious and kind. He’s a man for others, and his humble leadership has helped countless students lead lives committed to doing good. He reminds us all that character counts.

Breen began calling Knicks games in 1992, first on WFAN radio before moving to TV at MSG Network in 1997. He has stayed at the network since then, partnering with Knicks legend and Hall of Fame player Walt “Clyde” Frazier to form a fan-favorite broadcasting duo. Since 2006, Breen has also been the lead play-by-play announcer for ESPN’s and ABC’s nationally televised NBA games, including the NBA Finals, which he has called for a record 14 straight seasons.

A native of Yonkers, New York, Breen got his start in broadcasting as an undergraduate at Fordham.

“One of the main reasons I went to Fordham was WFUV,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2012, referring to the University’s public media station, which has been a training ground for generations of well-known sports broadcasters starting with Vin Scully, a 1949 Fordham graduate. “I can’t think of anything that could have better trained me for my career.”

Breen recently told the New York Post that his signature on-air call—“Bang!”—was something he first tested at Fordham.

“When we weren’t doing games, I was in the stands as a student,’’ Breen said. “When a Fordham player made a shot, I would scream, ‘Bang.’ I tried it on air as a student couple of times. I said, ‘This doesn’t work. I don’t really like it.’ … Then I went back to it when I started doing TV and felt it was a nice, concise way in a big moment. You say a one-syllable word and the crowd rises and you don’t have to scream over it. One easy word. I’m from the Vin Scully … school of conciseness. It worked with a big, loud crowd.”

Breen is the third Fordham graduate and fourth member of the Fordham family to earn the Hall of Fame’s Gowdy Award, which recognizes members of the electronic and print media for “outstanding contributions to basketball.”

John Andariese, FCRH ’60, one of Breen’s former Knicks broadcasting partners at MSG Network (and a star player at Fordham during the late 1950s), received the honor in 2014. Malcolm Moran, FCRH ’75, who was a sports reporter and columnist at The New York Times for nearly 20 years, and later wrote for USA Today, among other newspapers, won the award in 2007. Like Breen, Moran, who is now the director of the Sports Capital Journalism Program at Indiana University, got his start at WFUV. And legendary broadcaster Marty Glickman, who mentored and advised students at WFUV for 12 years, from 1988 to 2000, won the award in 1991.

Broadcasting & Cable magazine named two Fordham alumni to its Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City on October 29. The television industry trade magazine honored Jean Dietze, TMC ’73, and Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82, as part of its 29th Hall of Fame induction class.

Dietze retired this year as president of affiliate relations for NBCUniversal a position she had held since 2015 and in which she served as the network’s chief liaison to its affiliated stations nationwide. Dietze spent her entire career at NBC, starting as a secretary in the sales department in 1973—the same year she graduated from Fordham’s Thomas More College—and working her way up to vice president of TV network services and, eventually, head of affiliate relations.

Nuñez, a trustee fellow at Fordham, is the president and CEO of the CBS Global Distribution Group and chief content licensing officer for CBS. As the company’s top global executive, he oversees all content licensing of CBS-owned programming to domestic and international distribution partners across all cable, broadcast, and streaming services.

Shortly after his induction into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, CBS and Viacom, who are expected to close on their merger in early December, announced that Nuñez will serve as chairman for global distribution and chief content licensing officer for ViacomCBS.

Nuñez, who joined CBS in 1999, studied marketing and management at Fordham.

“I’m incredibly proud of my Jesuit education,” he told FORDHAM magazine in 2015. “That inquisitive nature that the Jesuits encourage … is a good skill set to have.”

In 2012, he established the Nuñez Family Scholarship Fund at his alma mater. Each year, the fund supports several full-time students at the Gabelli School of Business, with preference given to Hispanic students. (Nuñez has previously been recognized by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the top 25 Latinos in entertainment.)

The Hall of Fame ceremony was hosted by Inside Edition‘s Deborah Norville, NBC 4 New York’s Chuck Scarborough, and Good Day New York‘s Rosanna Scotto. Dietze and Nuñez‘s fellow Hall of Fame inductees included Byron Allen, Kelly Ripa, and Meredith Vieira.