Eleanor Mondale’s Long, Strange Journey

The marriage foundered through her WCCO–TV stint, but Mondale put on a brave face. (“You know, keep smiling, pretend nothing’s wrong, even when you’re just torn up on the inside.”)

She spent an interlude in Australia licking her wounds from the “brushfire” and her disintegrating marriage. Soon came an offer to sign on with WLOL–FM back in the Twin Cities, where she met her second husband, DJ Greg Thunder. Both eventually lost their jobs when Minnesota Public Radio bought WLOL. With ironic fatefulness, the two migrated to a radio station in Chicago.

Mondale concedes the relationship with Thunder never had a chance. “Greg is a really sweet, decent guy. But I hadn’t finished grieving for my first marriage. Yet here I was. Here we were, Greg and I, back in Chicago, going to some of the same restaurants I used to go to with Keith, running into other players. It was doomed. It was over in eleven months, start to finish, and I blame myself.”

A couple of years later, she piled her stuff and three dogs into the car and moved to LA. Soon thereafter, she met Weldon. The two set up house in the funky Los Feliz neighborhood, below Griffith Park, and began what for Weldon, at least, was “an adventure in exploration.”

Jobs came and went with E! Entertainment TV, Discovery Channel, Today Show Weekend, and Lifetime (“Or was that while I was at WLOL?”). She put an end to one short-lived bit, as a correspondent for something called Sex on the Champs Elysees (part of the Sex on . . .  series for E!), when, as she stood on a street in Paris, a producer told her to hand-off to porn actress Jenna Jameson, who was working a different segment for the same show back in Cannes. Mondale rolls her eyes. “Working with a porn star was the last thing I needed.”

A three-year contract as an entertainment reporter with CBS was ending, but she picked up a pilot for the  syndicated talk show Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. A pilot was shot, and everyone was jazzed by the possibilities. Mondale remembers finding herself floating on the usual Hollywood blandishments, flattery, babble, and BS. She was their girl, their star. Right up to the point when the producers dumped her for Cybill Shepherd.

Mondale was now living with a physician in New York, at the end of 5th Avenue on Washington Square, and in her own apartment she shared with Weldon. She started a company  (now defunct) making food treats for horses and dogs, but when things with the New York doctor “who shall remain nameless, please,” ended badly—with “him telling me he was going to kill my animals”—Mondale headed back to Minnesota for good in 2002. She bought the farm and picked up work covering thoroughbred horses for ESPN, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for ESPN2, and did stories on auto shows around the world for the Speed Channel. She ran into Poling, who was divorced and had apparently admired her from a distance, as she had him over the years.

“So what’s the question? ‘How has my perspective changed after all this? What do I do differently?’ ” She shifts on the couch in her quiet farmhouse. Owen, her lovable lunk of a dog lolls on the cool wood floor, while Ursula, a calico, perches on the back of a chair, purring in the visitor’s ear.

“I’m thankful for all the experiences I’ve had. But the TV business and the whole Los Angeles culture, if you can call it that, is no place to try to develop meaningful relationships. With everyone you meet, it’s always all about what you can do for them. It is so hard on people. You never know who your friends are. That’s why I loved and needed Joey [Weldon].