Ray Cortopassi joined the WGN News team in September of 2020 as co-anchor of WGN Evening News at 5 and 6 pm, WGN News at Nine and WGN News at Ten.
Cortopassi has been a television broadcaster for more than 25 years. Most recently, Cortopassi has been a member of Nexstar’s FOX59 news team in Indianapolis, where he anchored the #1 rated morning newscast and 4 pm news since 2009. Before working for FOX59, he was the evening anchor at the ABC station in Indianapolis and also spent time anchoring and reporting at TV stations in Las Vegas, NV and Traverse City, MI.
He started his career in Chicago as a reporter for City News Bureau. Ray has been honored with multiple Emmy and Associated Press awards during his years in Indianapolis.
As one of Chicago’s Very Own, Cortopassi hails from south suburban Dolton and graduated with a journalism degree from Columbia College Chicago. Ray’s parents grew up in Roseland; his father was a sheet metal foreman at U.S. Steel’s “South Works” plant, and his mother was a piano teacher who worked from their home in Dolton.
Like many kids growing up in 1970’s in Chicago, Ray often woke up to Ray Rayner and ate lunch watching Bozo’s Circus. It was in those formative days that Ray developed a love for the broadcast word and the magic of television.
