“Atlanta is my now; OKC is my origin story and kind of who I am,” Blayne Alexander says. “If it weren’t for my time in Oklahoma, I wouldn’t be who I am today.” The Oklahoma City native and “Dateline NBC” correspondent begins her third year on the popular true crime show this fall. She spoke to Luxiere from her home in Atlanta. Alexander is the daughter of two attorneys, and her father Robert Alexander, a Harvard Law graduate, still practices product liability law from his office in the First National Center. Her mother Anita practiced litigation alternatives, and eventually became an administrative judge before she retired. 

“I was born at Presbyterian Hospital,” Alexander says, “and I grew up in Mesta Park and attended Wilson Elementary until third grade, when I transferred to Nichols Hills Elementary.” 

Alexander easily recounts her path through the metro’s public education system, including Classen SAS and graduation from Edmond Santa Fe High School before heading off to Duke. She said she’s proud to be “an OKC girl,” and the pride shows in her tone as she speaks fondly of all her metro memories. 

It was in third grade at Wilson that she realized that she wanted to be a journalist—like many Oklahomans of that era, the Murrah bombing was the proximate cause for her decision to pursue the news business. Her father was on 9th Street at the time, and the bombing blew the windows out, but a 9-year-old can’t typically contextualize the scale of an event. That was true of Alexander until she woke the next day to see Bryant Gumbel on television, and it’s one of those historically symmetrical “coincidences” that Gumbel was anchoring NBC’s “Today” show from Oklahoma City.

“When I saw him on the television, I realized it was a big deal,” she says. “My family was the family who watched NBC, and so we watched Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel every morning before school. There are some people who know what they want to become, and I’m one of them, because I knew then that I was going to be a journalist.” 

The realization, which has stayed with her and informs her work at NBC, is the idea that the news tells people what story is a “big deal.” The reality of people whom she had only known from electronic images beamed from a New York City studio standing in Oklahoma City was disruptive enough to her experience that even a 9-year-old brain could compute that something transformative was happening. That shift solidified her love for journalism and writing; yes, she still writes, and loves the process.

“When I was in sixth grade, I wrote a research paper,” she says. “My parents are the world’s biggest cheerleaders, and they never insisted I enroll in law school. They just wanted me to work hard at whatever I loved and be successful. After I wrote that paper, my dad would make me read paragraphs aloud to him, and then when we went somewhere, it didn’t matter who was in the car with us—my grandmother, one of his legal partners, anyone—he’d make me read a couple of paragraphs, and then say, ‘Does that sound like it was written by a sixth grader?!’” 

Alexander called it the first confidence booster that she was indeed a writer, and it cemented the desire to pursue the idea professionally as a journalist. Her parents didn’t just encourage, though; they helped her investigate with questions about what internships look like in journalism, what area she wanted to focus on, where could she submit her writing as a high school student … they even encouraged her to join the staff of the high school paper.

Duke as her choice of university meant two things: a rigorous academic program and what Alexander calls “majoring in trash talking.” That’s related to Duke basketball, of course, and she remains a steadfast basketball fan, including the Thunder. Just to test her commitment to OKC, I asked if she’d become a Hawks fan while in Georgia. The look she returned was chastening. Duke is a springboard to opportunities for many graduates, but even by its high standards, Alexander’s path to NBC correspondent was hypersonic. She credits legendary Atlanta-area anchor Brenda Wood (16 Emmy Awards) with helping her on the path. 

Alexander went to Atlanta at 24, where she was a reporter for six years, including two and a half years as a D.C. correspondent. In 2019, she began as an NBC correspondent, bringing her story full circle to the third grader watching Bryant Gumbel on television. As cliche as it sounds, we had to pose the question: How do your Oklahoma roots inform what you do now and who you are now? There were the aw-shucks moments, like when she was “that” student on campus extending friendly greetings to strangers, a habit that drew more “Is she OK?” looks when she moved to New York City—but the story that stood out demonstrates that she’s an Okie all the way down.

“I had just finished a very tough interview with a woman whose story was pretty horrific,” Alexander says. “My first instinct is to listen. No one tells a person’s story better than the person can, so I want to respect their choice to talk to me, make them feel comfortable and let them tell their story. After she finished, I paused everything and asked if she was OK.” 

A simple, kind gesture that rarely happens in the world of television journalism, but Alexander was raised in the kindness culture of Oklahoma, beginning with her parents and Avery Chapel AME in northeast OKC. That informs how she treats the people she interviews. 

“‘Dateline’ is telling a story of what it looks like when a family or person gets justice, so something has gone very wrong for them to be talking to us,” she said. “We want to tell the story of who this person was, not just the nuts and bolts of the crime. There is nothing natural about this process. We are entering their life at one of its most difficult moments, and it takes trust for them to talk to us. I keep that in mind in my writing and reporting.”

As for season 35, Alexander said it features the mysteries and stories viewers love, but it also has one story she calls “a little different,” and as a teaser of sorts, she finished with: “If I live to be 160, I will never forget the interview for this episode.” Stay tuned. •

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