Dick Nourse, who served as the main anchor at KSL-TV for 43 years and delivered news to generations of Utahns, has passed away.

Thursday, KSL reported Nourse's passing. He was 83. There was no mention of the cause of mortality, but the station reported that Nourse was a three-time cancer survivor, according to a report by the St. Louis Tribune.

After appearing in his first newscast for KSL-Channel 5 in 1964, he retired in 2007.

Nourse told co-anchor Bruce Lindsay during a 2007 retirement tribute on KSL that after driving from Colorado in a "brand-new '63 Corvair" in 1964, he parked on Social Hall Avenue, where Salt Lake City's three television stations were located at the time.

“I was in love with my job and I wanted to be there, more than anything,” Nourse said of his 1964 to 2007 career in KSL’s newsroom.

Nourse's Time in News

Nourse initially searched out employment at KUTV-Channel 2. He reported that they told him, “You’re a greenhorn. Come back in five years.”

The following day, he went to what was then KCPX-Channel 4 (now KTVX) and received a similar response. A few days later, he went to KSL, where he was offered an audition and, a few days after that, a job.

Within a year of joining KSL, Nourse recruited weatherman Bob Welti and sportscaster Paul James from Channel 4 to form one of the longest-running anchor teams in the history of Utah broadcasting, per KSL.

Welti began his television career in 1948 at Salt Lake City's first television station, KDYL-TV (now KTVX). In the 1960s, KSL recruited him and James to work with Nourse, and the triumvirate embodied KSL's on-air personality for decades as the station rose to market dominance.

The triumvirate worked together until James and Welti's retirement in 1991; from 1979 to 1991, Nourse alternated with Lindsay and Shelley Thomas in the role of co-anchor.

“There definitely was a chemistry there that you could feel because people really welcomed us into their homes,’’ Nourse told The Salt Lake Tribune in an interview at his retirement in 2007.

What Others Had to Say

After Chris Clark from WTVF in Nashville left earlier that year after 41 years, Beth King from the national Society of Professional Journalists said she believed Nourse may have held the record for longest local news anchor tenure.

KSL's then-news director, Con Psarras, called Nourse "a consummate professional." “He was always there, he never called in sick, he’s hard-working, and he cares about the community he works in.”

KSL fans watched Nourse conquer non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a lymphatic system malignancy, before his retirement.

He rated his 1967 monthlong reporting journey with Utah soldiers in Vietnam the highlight of his career in the Tribune. In 2019, he told KSL reporter Carole Mikita about that trip at his St. George home.