Well-preserved local news icon Tong animatedly delivers regional headlines on WPIX's 10 p.m. newscast.

Born in Qingdao, Tong and her family moved to the US when she was four years old. She grew up in Washington D.C., graduated from Bryn Mawr College, and began a doctoral program at Stanford. Although she intended to study Chinese and Japanese literature, she began her career in broadcasting with a summer job at KPIX radio in San Francisco. She began her television career as a reporter with KPIX at well, gradually working her way to a co-anchor spot in Sacramento. By 1981 she moved to New York and within two years she was an anchor on the 5 and 11 o'clock news on WABC. Controversy brewed when Tong was replaced out of nowhere by Susan Roesgen in 1991: while some suggested that WABC was exhibiting a racial bias, Tong believed that agism was more at play, as she was over forty at the time. She's since found a home at WPIX as the anchor of the 10 o'clock news, but age discrimination drama has followed her: she was involved in a suit filed by a former director when the director lost her job and Tong believed she was given a bad review and pay cut due to her age in 2012. [Image via Getty]