“I thought I was one of those special people that didn’t require a lot of sleep,” Eva Pilgrim admits, recalling her days as a correspondent and anchor for ABC News. “If I could get four hours of sleep, I was a rock star.”
That was then. These days, Eva Pilgrim is enjoying a full night’s rest on a much more regular basis, as well as spending more time with her daughter. But it took giving up the cachet that comes with working at a big network and taking a chance on something different.
Life of a Network Correspondent
Eva Pilgrim spent years climbing the ranks at ABC News, earning both a co-anchor role on “Good Morning America Weekend” and later at “GMA3.” But it was her promotion to senior correspondent, a role she continued throughout her time at ABC News, that she counts among her proudest achievements.
“It wasn’t the sitting on a set hosting but the actual part of the journalism, which is what most of us signed up for,” she says.
The job meant covering breaking news across the country. She kept “go bags” packed for every season and situation because a story could break at any moment.
She recalls, “They’ll call (and ask) ‘how quickly can you get to LaGuardia? We’ve got a flight for you in 45 minutes.'”
“It’s sort of this drug, it’s an adrenaline rush, right?” she said, “because it would be whoever got on the flight was the person doing the story.”
Once assigned to a story, the pace can be relentless. On the road, Pilgrim was often covering the same story for “Good Morning America” and “World News Tonight.” “It’s just around the clock … If you were on a story that had legs … you’d go weeks without coming off of that schedule.”
A low point came for Pilgrim after covering a string of tough stories: protests in Charlottesville, then several back-to-back hurricanes. In the middle of one of those storms, her long-term boyfriend broke up with her as the hurricane was making landfall. It was her birthday.
“I hit my wall,” she says simply.
Loving London
Eva Pilgrim had a “tearful conversation” with execs at ABC News, admitting the workload was becoming overwhelming. They responded by moving her to the London Bureau temporarily. The pace was a bit different, and Pilgrim loved it. “I was living my best London foreign correspondent life.” She was also getting to know her now-husband, who at first, she considered just a friend.
But her mother, who visited Pilgrim in London, saw that it was a good match before she did.
“She was like, no, no, no, no, no… he’s it,” Pilgrim recalls. Her mother noticed how supportive he was of her career. “He was just unbothered by my crazy schedule.”
A wrinkle arose when her bosses asked her to return to the U.S. to audition for the co-anchor role on “Good Morning America Weekend,” a role she eventually landed. It was great for her career, but bad for her love life. By that point, the two had started dating, and her mom assured her a long-distance romance would work.
“She’s like, ‘Eva, he’ll be here six months.’” Pilgrim recalls. “And he was.”
Settling Down & Making A Big Move
In 2023, Pilgrim was named co-anchor of “GMA3.” By that point, the couple had married and welcomed their daughter, Ella. But her life at work did not slow down.
Last year, Pilgrim could feel the media landscape shifting and asked her agent to quietly explore other options. “They had laid off the whole GMA3 staff… the team I had worked with for two years … And I had a suspicion that they were going to renegotiate my contract.”
Soon after, she got an intriguing offer. Pilgrim recalls her agent starting the conversation with the following words: “I just want you to know what the hours are first.”
“The idea of going into work at 11 and leaving at like 5, 5:30, that is a dream,” Pilgrim said.
It was for the anchor job at “Inside Edition,” the longest-running nationally syndicated news show. Deborah Norville was stepping away from the role after a 30-year run.
Another bonus: “They were offering me the ability to do all these other projects that I wanted to do, on my terms,” Pilgrim said.
Despite the hours and flexibility, she still hesitated to leave the network. “It was part of my identity, and I felt safe there.” But she saw the bigger picture and decided to make the move.
Taking The Leap
Six months into the anchor role at “Inside Edition,” Pilgrim is happy she took the risk.
She’s working on a few dream bookings (the details of which she declined to disclose). She is also enjoying how the syndicated show includes stories each broadcast that are uplifting.
Acknowledging that much of today’s news is heavy, she adds, “I love that at the end of every show, we get the chance to make people smile and feel good.”
Outside of “Inside Edition,” she has the flexibility to work on projects on other platforms, meeting her contemporaries where they are. “People are not not consuming media — they’re just consuming it in a different way.” Whether it’s podcasting or something else, she’s looking to take the skills she built over two decades of network reporting and carry them into a new and more diverse professional chapter.
The payoff has also been personal. Her daughter, Ella, has noticed the change in her mom’s schedule. “I wake up with her in the morning, we do breakfast together, I take her to school, and that was never a thing that happened before.”
“It feels like it’s a gift, because how long do they actually like you?” she asks, only half-joking. “I’m just trying to soak it all in.”
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