Dee Dee Gatton is an American television journalist whose career has taken her from local newsrooms in Oregon, Arizona, Illinois and North Carolina to a national anchor role in Washington, D.C. She is currently associated with The National News Desk, Sinclair’s national news operation.
For readers searching for Dee Dee Gatton’s age, the most accurate answer requires a qualification. Her exact date of birth has not been confirmed by an authoritative public source. Several biography websites list August 1, 1987, which would make her 39 years old as of August 2026, but those sites do not provide a reliable original source for the date. Her professional biography, résumé and Sinclair materials do not publish her birthday.
That gap in the public record contrasts with her career, which is considerably better documented. Gatton has worked in television journalism since at least 2013, building experience as a reporter, producer and anchor before moving into national broadcasting.
How old is Dee Dee Gatton?
Dee Dee Gatton’s precise age cannot be stated as a confirmed fact from the strongest available public records.
The date August 1, 1987 appears repeatedly on celebrity-biography websites, but the claim has not been traced to an employer biography, university record, direct statement from Gatton or another authoritative source. One of the sites repeating the date also published an age calculation inconsistent with a 1987 birth year, adding further reason for caution.
If August 1, 1987 is correct, Gatton turned 39 on August 1, 2026. The safest formulation, however, is that 39 is her reported age based on an unverified birth date, rather than a definitively established biographical fact.
Her professional records provide much firmer evidence about her education and broadcasting career.
From William & Mary to her first television newsrooms
Gatton earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the College of William & Mary. Her professional résumé says she graduated summa cum laude, while contemporaneous reporting about her career independently confirms both the university and her field of study.
Her documented television career begins in Oregon in 2013. According to her professional résumé, she worked at KPIC in Roseburg from January to September of that year, handling weekday anchoring and multimedia-journalist duties.
She then moved to KVAL in Eugene, where she worked as a weekend anchor and reporter from September 2013 until June 2014. Her next Oregon position was at KLSR, also in Eugene, where her responsibilities expanded to primary anchoring and producing.
Those early jobs established a pattern that continued through her career: Gatton combined on-air anchoring with reporting rather than working exclusively behind a studio desk.
In October 2015, she moved to a substantially larger television market when she joined KPNX in Phoenix, Arizona, as an anchor and reporter. She remained there through the end of 2016.
Her move from Phoenix to Illinois in early 2017 was documented at the time by the State Journal-Register, which identified KPNX as her previous station and reported that she was joining the anchor team serving the Springfield market.
Award-winning reporting in Springfield
Gatton began working for WICS and FOX in Springfield, Illinois, in early 2017. Her professional résumé dates the position from January 2017 through March 2020 and describes her work as a combination of primary anchoring and special-projects reporting.
One of the clearest independently documented recognitions from this stage of her career came in 2019.
Sinclair’s corporate awards archive lists Gatton as the recipient of a first-place Illinois Associated Press award for Best Light Feature for a story titled “Saint’s Flight.” That precise award description is more reliable than broader labels that appear on some professional summaries of her accomplishments.
The Springfield period also represented another step in the progression of her career. After several years moving through reporting and anchoring jobs in Oregon and Arizona, she was now serving as a primary anchor while continuing to produce longer-form and special-project reporting.
In 2020, Gatton left Illinois for Charlotte, North Carolina, where her reporting became especially visible through consumer investigations.
Consumer reporting at WBTV in Charlotte
Gatton joined WBTV in Charlotte in 2020 and remained with the station until October 2022. Her professional résumé describes her as an anchor and special-projects reporter, while surviving WBTV reports provide concrete examples of the consumer-focused journalism she produced there.
Medical billing became one notable part of that work.
In August 2020, Gatton reported on a woman facing approximately $4,400 in disputed medical charges. After WBTV contacted the organizations involved, the bill was cleared. The case illustrated the practical focus of the station’s consumer reporting: rather than merely explaining a complaint, the reporting followed the issue through to a financial resolution for the viewer.
By February 2021, a Gatton-bylined WBTV report said the station’s investigations had helped viewers save more than $177,000 in less than a year.
Her later professional résumé placed the total impact of her consumer reporting at more than $250,000 returned to viewers. Because that larger figure comes from her résumé rather than an independently audited account, it is best understood as a professionally reported career metric. The earlier $177,000 figure, by contrast, appeared directly in WBTV’s published coverage.
This period added a different dimension to Gatton’s public profile. Her earlier career demonstrated experience moving between reporting and anchoring roles; the WBTV years also produced a visible record of service-oriented consumer journalism dealing with bills, disputes and financial problems affecting individual viewers.
Moving from local television to national news
Gatton’s career shifted from local broadcasting to national news in October 2022, when she joined Sinclair’s The National Desk operation in Washington, D.C.
Her professional representative later announced that she had been promoted to an evening anchor position for the program.
The move marked a significant change in scale. Her previous jobs had been tied primarily to individual television markets—Roseburg, Eugene, Phoenix, Springfield and Charlotte. At The National Desk, her work became part of a national news product distributed through Sinclair’s network of stations.
Her continuing presence there is supported by more recent records. In August 2025, Sinclair named Gatton among the anchor team for The National News Desk when announcing another addition to the program’s lineup.
She also continued performing interviews and national-news work into 2026. A January 2026 National News Desk report, for example, included an interview conducted by Gatton, providing recent evidence that her role remained active rather than simply appearing on an outdated professional résumé.
Her professional profile also lists her as fluent in Spanish and conversational in Tagalog, although those language abilities are based on professionally supplied biographical information rather than independent testing.
A career documented more clearly than her private biography
The contrast between Gatton’s searchable age and her actual public record is notable.
Online biographies often present television journalists in the same format used for entertainment celebrities, attaching precise birthdays, relationship details, measurements, salaries and net-worth figures whether or not reliable evidence exists. Gatton’s case shows why those claims require scrutiny.
Her career can be reconstructed with reasonable confidence because there are professional résumés, contemporaneous station reports, published journalism and Sinclair records documenting her employment and awards. Her exact birthday does not have the same evidentiary foundation.
That means the strongest profile of Gatton is not one built around speculative personal details. It is the documented story of a journalist who began working in Oregon newsrooms, advanced through Phoenix and Springfield, developed a record of consumer reporting in Charlotte and eventually moved into national anchoring in Washington.
Final thoughts
Dee Dee Gatton is best understood as an experienced television journalist and national news anchor whose professional career is much better documented than many of the personal details circulated about her online.
Her exact age remains unconfirmed by an authoritative public source. The frequently repeated August 1, 1987 birth date would make her 39 in August 2026, but it should be treated as an unverified report rather than an established fact.
What can be stated with considerably greater confidence is the trajectory of her work: from local reporting and anchoring in Oregon, through Phoenix and Springfield, to consumer journalism at WBTV and ultimately a national anchor position with The National News Desk in Washington.
:::
