Cheryl Casone, an anchor with TV’s Fox Business Network, learned everything she needed to know about business in the jump seat of Southwest Airlines planes. At least, that’s how she got her start. Casone, a Garland native, joined SWA after college and spent much of her in-flight downtime studying up on stocks and bonds; she had inherited a small sum from her great uncle, and was determined to make it grow.
After working as a flight attendant, she felt the call of the small screen and decided to put her communications degree from Northern Arizona University to work. She headed to San Francisco, where she was offered a job as a business reporter. “I knew the market, so it was an easy fit for me,” Casone says. That time in the jump seat paid off and, after seven years on the West Coast, she moved to New York and broke into cable news.
Following gigs at MSNBC, CBS, and CNN, Casone landed at Fox News Channel and went on to join the fledgling Fox Business Network as an anchor in 2007. If you’ve never watched Fox Business (in North Texas it’s Channel 228 on Time Warner Cable), the format is a little more casual than other business programming. “Other business networks tend to talk in elitist terms, and kind of talk down to their audience,” Casone says. “Why not just give people advice they need in a sensible way?”
Fox Business is broadcast in nearly 50 million homes across the U.S., so Casone is becoming a familiar face. “People are watching Fox Business,” says Casone, who visits Dallas every few months. “My brother is an investment adviser, and people will ask him, ‘Is that your sister?’ ”
So, if you see a familiar blonde out and about at the Arboretum, or at Arlington Hall—where her sister is to wed this month—feel free to ask about the stock market. Just don’t ask her to move back to Dallas. “I’ve thought about it in the past, but I’m so happy in New York,” Casone says. “I love this job.”
