I
t ’ s hard to believe , but Steve Wilkos is now in his 18th season as the host of The Steve Wilkos Show . The show airs in
Chicago on WCIU-TV .
“ 18 seasons ,” he says . “ I wake up every morning , and I say the same thing . I still can ' t believe it . I ' ve been doing it , you know . I ' ve been on TV for 31 straight years , and I still can ' t believe it . I woke up from a dream the other day , and I told my wife , it ’ s so crazy what we do for a living . My dad was in the military and became a Chicago policeman . And , you know , he did it for 30 years and then retired and moved to Florida . And that ' s what I was going to do . I joined the Marines . I became a Chicago policeman . I planned on doing it till I got my pension . I just got a weird break that changed my whole life .”
Wilkos ’ big break came in 1994 when he was hired to do security for The Jerry Springer Show . He didn ’ t think much of it at the time . “ When I started the show , It was nothing . It was a blah , blah , blah talk show . And then then it , you know , it took the turn where it went confrontational . And then when it hit , oh boy , it hit .”
What was it like working in that mayhem ? “ I was telling my kids this over the summer when we went to Italy . We were in Rome , and we saw the Roman Coliseum , and I told my kids that the Jerry Springer show was like the Roman Coliseum because people wanted to be fed . They were bloodthirsty , our audiences in Chicago , yeah . If there was no fight , everybody was disappointed . Our studio was a little bigger than the one I have now , and when things would go crazy and go up in the air , you couldn ' t even hear the person next to you . That ' s how loud that studio would get . I remember one time the producers were trying to get my attention . I was on the stage , and they were screaming at me , and I couldn ' t hear them because of the crowd . That happened a lot . We would have guests like the Ku Klux Klan and those type of shows , and when we did , we also had people from the audience coming up and fighting the guests on the show . I mean , it was just , it was absolutely nuts .”
His own show is a little bit different than that , and it was a conscious decision to go a different route . “ I think my shows nothing like Jerry ' s ,” he says . “ Jerry used to say all the time that it was the circus , and he was just the ringmaster . When I got my show , we could have gone the lazy , easy route and made it like another form of Jerry Springer . But my wife actually came up with the concept of this show . She said , ‘ Listen , what are you good at ? You ' re a policeman , and you ' re a really good policeman . We ' re going to take the policeman off the streets of Chicago and put you on stage , and you ' re going to deal with topics like that .’ We ’ ve done sexual
By Rick Kaempfer
18 SEASONS OF STEVE WILKOS
assault , crimes , theft , murders , missing people . We ' ve done all kinds of things . Now , admittedly , we ’ ll do a cheating story every now and then , and we ' ll bring out the DNA experts . But where Jerry was kind of the funny uncle hosting a show . I ' m the tough cop hosting a show . I thought that it was really important to do something totally different than Jerry so that people couldn ’ t say , Oh , you ' re just doing the Jerry Springer show all over again .”
Another thing that has changed is his location . He now lives on the East Coast . That ’ s where The Steve Wilkos Show is taped . “ But I ’ m still Chicago through and through ,” he says . “ I mean , I was born and
Steve Wilkos
raised in Chicago . I grew up in Roscoe village . I went to Lane Tech High School . I ’ m from Chicago . When I was in the Marines , I ' d meet other Marines , and they ’ d say , ‘ Oh , I ' m from Chicago too .’ Oh yeah , where ? They ' d say something like Kankakee . That ’ s not Chicago .”
Steve still comes back to his hometown every year . When we spoke , he was here helping WCIU hand out food to the underprivileged . He also came back to town last May and fulfilled a lifelong dream . He got to throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game . “ May 16 ,” he says , remembering the exact day . “ That was another one of the highlights of my life . I grew up right down the street from Wrigley Field . I used to flip up seats after the game when I was a kid because they would give kids passes to future games if we did that . And so that was my childhood . I remember the first day of taping on my current show , my wife gave me a present . She gave me wooden cufflinks that were made out of old seats from Wrigley . And she said , ‘ You ' ve come a long way from flipping seats at Wrigley Field .’ It was a really nice moment , but this was even better . From flipping seats to throwing out the first pitch . Man . I never thought that was going to happen .” The Steve Wilkos Show airs weekdays in Chicago at 10 am on the U . february 2025 illinoisentertainer . com 19