For twenty years, the midday hours on WGN-720 AM belonged to two voices sharing one microphone: Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey. Markey, a longtime Chicago Sun-Times columnist and novelist before she ever sat behind a radio mic, died on September 11, 2026. She was 82.

Markey was born February 18, 1944, in Cleveland and moved with her family to Los Angeles at 13. She earned her journalism degree from Northwestern University's Medill School in 1965 and was later inducted into the school's Hall of Achievement, an honor reserved for alumni who distinguished themselves in the field.

Before radio, Markey spent roughly fifteen years writing a syndicated, thrice weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times, work Northwestern's Medill School later described as chronicling "the insanities of contemporary life," according to Northwestern Medill. She went on to publish two novels, The Daddy Clock and Just Trust Me, along with two essay collections, How to Survive Your High School Reunion and Other Mid-Life Crises and You Only Get Married for the First Time Once. The Daddy Clock, released by Bantam Books in 1998, drew reviews in The New York Times, the London Express and the Denver Post.

Markey's radio career grew out of guest appearances on WGN's Bob Collins Show, which led programmer Lorna Gladstone to pair her with O'Malley for a new show that launched opposite the Super Bowl in 1989. What began as unscripted, call-in conversation grew, within a few years, into Chicago's top-rated midday show, according to the Daily Herald.

The pairing, sometimes billed as "The Girlfriends," won the Gracie Award for Best Major Market Talk Show from the National Association of Women in Radio and Television twice, and Markey was later named to Crain's Chicago Business list of the city's 100 Most Influential Women and to Talkers magazine's national list of the Top 100 Talk Show Hosts. Chicago media critic Rob Feder called the on-air chemistry between the two women "lightning in a bottle," crediting them with a rapport that, in his words, "transcended radio," according to Talkers.

The daily show ended in 2009 after a twenty year run, and Markey and O'Malley reunited for a Saturday edition airing from 2013 to 2017. Markey also appeared with videographer Tom Weinberg in the television series "What the El" on WPWR, and Weinberg later said she had "the most consistent capacity for having fun" of anyone he worked with.

Markey married Tom Collinger, a Northwestern University professor emeritus, in 2002. She is survived by her children, Erin Markey and Adam Markey, stepchildren Zach Collinger and Kate Collinger Buxton, granddaughters Remi and Maisy Buxton, and her brother, Jim Lindheim.

Markey's columns and novels captured a wry, self-aware slice of Chicago life, and the unscripted conversation she and O'Malley built across two decades on WGN still lives in the station's archives and in the memories of the listeners who called in to join them. Her name remains in Northwestern's Medill Hall of Achievement and on two Gracie Awards that recognized a show built on nothing more complicated than two women who liked talking to each other, and to Chicago.