Eleanor Mondale’s Long, Strange Journey

Weldon says that despite their years together, and all the private thoughts they’ve shared, never at any point in the brain cancer siege, not even on the rides back and forth to Mayo for chemotherapy, did the topic of “If I die” ever come up.

“It was too negative,” he says.

“I always admired that and envied her. You know, a lot of people live their lives within the rules of how somebody else thinks you are supposed to act and be, just so they don’t make waves. That isn’t Eleanor. Me, I usually lean to the thing that wouldn’t draw attention. But Eleanor is more likely to ask, ‘Whose rules are you breaking?’ Maybe those differences are one reason why we’re such good friends.”

Mondale herself offers little or no comment on the distant past and the year with WCCO–TV. She discusses it, but only after you bring it up. And she seems to hold no palpable animosity toward anyone involved, with the exception of the Star Tribune’s principal antagonist.

If you need proof of her “good sport” credo, she now regards Neal Karlen, writer of the “Wild Child” piece, as a friend, and has happily visited his University of Minnesota writing class to talk about being the subject of stories like these. (“And to remind those young journalist types that they have a responsibility to be truthful.”) When Karlen, who had broken his leg, came to LA for a wedding, she put him up and schlepped him around.

“The girl’s a mensch,” says Karlen.

At the very least, a politician’s kid develops thick skin. Mondale understands the lingering image, especially as she opens a new phase of her life with WCCO–AM.

Her cohost, veteran broadcaster Susie Jones, says, “From what I had read about her in the media, I was expecting this rock star, someone just full of herself. But she’s nothing like that. We went out to lunch at Lucia’s and shared a lot of our lives. She’s really very down to earth.”

Over coffee at the Minnesota State Fair last summer, Mondale walked me through a fast timeline of her life so far. What was supposed to be a tidy list of dates, jobs, lovers, and other major events very quickly looked like the diagram of a trick football play, with crisscrossing arrows, Xs, spirals, reverses, and elaborate blocking maneuvers (the latter necessitated by a handful of bad boyfriends).

The condensed version goes something like this: DC boarding school, (after “truancy issues” at a previous school), college at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York (including a semester in Kenya, “the greatest experience of my life”), followed fairly soon thereafter by a first shot at Hollywood.

“I wanted to be an actress. I think it had a lot to do with being a kid and watching how every time my dad would stand up to talk people would applaud. I thought that was pretty cool. I was always in school plays. I loved it.”

That first spin through LA netted, most notably, one episode of Three’s Company playing a medical intern, a TV movie with John Ritter, a bit part as a TV anchor on Dynasty, a Yoplait commercial, another for Molson Light beer, and a flirtation with a show called The Rock ’n Roll Evening News for syndication giant King World.

This period runs concurrent with her father’s run for the White House in 1984 and her relocation to Chicago, where she did stints with three different radio stations and a TV affiliate—and met and married her first husband, Keith Van Horne, of the Chicago Bears, in 1988.

“I loved him for all the wrong reasons,” she says now. “But I loved him.”