Judy Markey

Judy Markey, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist and longtime co-host of WGN Radio's "Kathy and Judy Show," died on 11 September 2026 in Switzerland at the age of 82. She had lived for years with a degenerative neurological disorder and chose a voluntary medically assisted death, a decision her husband Tom Collinger and her broadcast partner Kathy O'Malley described as consistent with the values she had voiced on air. WGN announced the news to listeners the same morning, and tributes from colleagues and "Girlfriends" listeners quickly followed across Chicago media.

Born Judy Lindheim on 18 February 1944 in Cleveland to Johnny and Lois Lindheim, she grew up around her parents' record store and dance hall before the family moved to Beverly Hills when she was 13. She earned a journalism degree from Northwestern University's Medill School (BSJ 1965), worked in advertising and book publishing in New York, and married Tom Markey. The couple lived in Rome, Paris and Amsterdam while he worked for Abbott Labs, then settled in Wilmette, Illinois, where she raised daughter Erin and son Adam after the marriage ended.

Eager for a writing career, Markey pitched magazines including Cosmopolitan and Glamour, then built a syndicated slice-of-life column for the Chicago Sun-Times that ran for about 16 years. She published column collections such as "How to Survive Your High School Reunion and Other Mid-Life Crises" and "You Only Get Married for the First Time Once," and later novels "The Daddy Clock" (1998) and "Just Trust Me" (2005). She was inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement and named among Crain's Chicago Business "One Hundred Most Influential Women" and Talkers magazine's top talk-show hosts.

She met Kathy O'Malley, then a Chicago Tribune columnist, while both played the wicked stepmother in Chicago City Ballet "Cinderella" productions in the 1980s. In 1989 WGN program director Lorna Gladstone paired them for a Super Bowl Sunday tryout; the chemistry stuck. From 1989 to 2009, and again on weekends from 2013 to 2017, "Kathy and Judy" dominated midday talk radio with unscripted segments such as Sex Thursday, Speak Your Piece and Merry Medical Christmas Letters. Listeners called themselves "The Girlfriends," packed annual Hilton fan conventions, and treated the show as a sisterhood rare in a male-dominated format. The program won Gracie Awards for Best Major Market Talk Show, and newsman Steve Bertrand became a beloved third voice.

In later years Markey split time between Highland Park and Tucson with Collinger, a Northwestern Medill professor emeritus she married in 2002. She hoped her death would widen public conversation about the right to choose how to die; Illinois's medical aid in dying law took effect the day after she died. She is survived by Collinger; children Erin and Adam Markey; stepchildren Zach Collinger and Kate Collinger Buxton; and two grandchildren. A private celebration of life was livestreamed on 17 September 2026.