NEW YORK – There are some things CNN anchor Bill Hemmer — dubbed “The Chad Lad” during the Florida election debacle — is willing to do.
Fly off to Afghanistan and cut his chops as a war correspondent, for example. Then there are things he won’t even dream of. Like online dating.
“Absolutely not. No, no,” says the evening news anchor, who last year was voted one of People magazine’s Top 50 bachelors. “The only women I date are the women I meet in person. I do not like blind dates.”
Hemmer lives in Atlanta and has never been married.
“I want to have children,” he says. “I’m still looking for the ever-elusive Mrs. Hemmer.”
Hemmer has traveled the world to cover the top stories of the day: Sept. 11, Kosovo, Timothy McVeigh’s execution. But when people talk about him, it’s not his work they tend to comment on — it’s the fact that he looks like he just got his drivers license.
“But I’m a heck of a lot older than people think I am,” he pleads. (At 37, he’s even got the graying temples to prove it.)
The Cincinnati native is showing one sign of advancing age: He now wears glasses on camera.
But co-workers at a recent CNN gathering poked fun at the anchor, suggesting he donned frames with fake lenses to make him look older. Hemmer went along with them for the ride: “Without them, I look 24. But with them? Twenty-four and a half.”
