The Stunning Transformation Of GMA's Ginger Zee

The following article mentions an eating disorder, mental health struggles, and suicide.

"Good Morning America" star Ginger Zee is such a key part of the morning news landscape that it is hard to remember a time before the peppy weather expert was on television. But how did she get from to the Big Apple from her small hometown just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan? It was certainly not an overnight trek.

Zee developed a love for weather early in life and, with a go-getter attitude and a few good mentors, was able to parlay that into a career in broadcasting. She worked at various stations in the Midwest before "GMA" came calling in 2011. Two years after starting as the show's weekend meteorologist, Zee was put in charge of all climate and environmental content across ABC News platforms. Now the Chief Meteorologist and Chief Climate Correspondent at ABC News, Zee appears on numerous programs in addition to her daily gig as the "GMA" weekday meteorologist.

Oh, but that's not all. Zee has competed on a reality television show, voiced a cartoon character, and had her own home renovation show. She has also written numerous books and juggles raising a family alongside her thriving career. Here is a look at the stunning transformation of "GMA's" Ginger Zee.

Ginger Zee's name is recognizable around the world, but many fans do not know she uses a stage name. Born Ginger Zuidgeest, Zee changed her surname for television. While she was born in California, Zee's family moved to a farm in Western Michigan shortly after her birth. This is where the star spent her formative years, during which she developed a fascination with weather. "I chose this career because I saw a waterspout on Lake Michigan when I was eight," she said to Chicago Magazine. "My mom told us to get inside, but I was mesmerized. I really thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen."

While a student at Rockford High School — where she was active in soccer and cheer and was named homecoming queen — the meteorologist worked at the University Club of Grand Rapids. "She really stood out to the members and everybody. She is nice all the time," her former boss told MLive in 2017.

Ginger Zee has been candid about the tragic impact her parents' divorce had on her mental health as a young child. Zee's parents, Robert Zuidgeest and Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, divorced when she was only 7. The big changes that followed — such as moving and making new friends — were hard on Zee. "I needed to control something. 'I know what I'll do, I'll just not eat,'" Zee said while competing on "Dancing With the Stars" in 2016 (via The Daily Mail). "I'm so angry that that's the way I decided to cope. It's going to be with me my entire life."

By 12, Zee's struggle with anorexia became so serious that her mother took her to tour an in-patient treatment center. "It was to scare me, basically," Zee told People. "There were girls who were on their way to death. 'That one will die tomorrow,' she'd say. It was shocking and it didn't make me better right away, but I knew I had the great support of my family, and the fear factor was there." Zee soon entered therapy, which started her road to recovery. She also received guidance from her stepfather, Carl Craft, who taught her about nutrition.

Ginger Zee left Michigan to attend Indiana's Valparaiso University, an hour outside of Chicago, Illinois. She was close enough to home to drive back to Grand Rapids to work her old high school job on the weekends, and the rest of her costs were covered by a half-ride scholarship. While Zee was contemplating broadcasting before Valparaiso, thanks to a high school teacher who had previously worked as a newscaster, the TV part of the career plan did not fully solidify until she was in college. The star's degree is in meteorology, as working in weather was never in question — only whether she would do that on a screen.

Early into her college career, a professor reiterated that Zee should consider a career in broadcasting. This led her to seek out internships, and the one station who responded to her ended up offering a life-changing experience. It was at ABC 33/40 in Alabama that the star found her calling, under the mentorship of longtime on-air meteorologist James Spann. "I found an absolute admiration of weather on television," Zee said to The Weather Junkies. She later interned with renowned TV meteorologists Tom Skilling and Peter Chan, also during university. Zee earned her Bachelor of Science degree in 2002, graduating a semester early and with minors in mathematics and Spanish. Shockingly, she still struggled to find a TV job after graduation and worked in radio for months as a stopover.

Anorexia is far from the only long-term health issue that Ginger Zee has faced. For instance, Zee was diagnosed with narcolepsy when she was a 21-year-old college student. When she went on medication to treat her sleep disorder, this exacerbated her mental health issues — leading to a second diagnosis of depression, which had gone undiagnosed up until that point despite Zee having displayed signs of depression since she was a child. "It was the 1980s, and a lot of people didn't know what to do," Zee said in an interview with "Good Morning America." "I don't think my parents could have been educated enough to recognize it or see it."

Zee's struggle with depression has reached a few extremes, and she has not shied away from sharing the tougher stuff with fans. This includes her two suicide attempts — one in college and one early on in her on-air career — which the star has used to bring attention to mental health causes and Suicide Prevention Week. She has also been candid about having checked into a mental health hospital less than two weeks before starting her dream job at "Good Morning America," and her borderline personality disorder diagnosis. "I hope that me talking about it can help distinguish for people that just because you look bright and sunny does not mean that that is what's happening on the inside," Zee told "GMA."

While Ginger Zee landed herself on a national news platform at a relatively young age, she had to put in some grunt work before she was able to jump to the big leagues.  This included seven months working in radio at WLAV FM/ WXMI in Grand Rapids, Michigan,even though TV was the ultimate goal. Zee soon found herself a small screen job at WEYI NBC 25, located a few hours away in Flint. She worked there for two years, from June 2003 to April 2005, then moved back to Grand Rapids for another year and a half for a job at WOOD TV. The latter job was more up her alley, as she was able to track storms as well as cover science and the environment more generally as an anchor.

Though Zee had a nice life in her home state of Michigan, she made so little money that she was working as a bartender and teaching aerobics on the side. Her next move was not simply financial, however, as it took her to one of the nation's largest markets — Chicago. So, Zee bought out her remaining contract in Grand Rapids to take a job at WMAQ-Channel 5, an NBC affiliate. She stayed with the station for five years, also working as a fill-in for other NBC and MSNBC News programming (and as an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Valparaiso University).

Ginger Zee had a goal of being on "The Today Show" by the time she was 30, so she was understandably pumped when she was hired by "Good Morning America" at exactly that age, despite it not being the exact program she manifested. And though "The Today Show" was the number one morning newscast in the nation when Zee was hired in 2011, "GMA" pulled into first place the next season and has remained in first ever since. Given her popularity, it would be naïve to think that Zee did not help the show claim the throne.

When she began at "GMA," Zee's main job was to appear on Saturday and Sunday as the weekend meteorologist. She was also contracted to make occasional appearances on other ABC News programs, such as "Nightline," "This Week," and "World News Tonight," and was tasked with filling in for Sam Champion on weekdays when he could not be at "GMA."

But Zee's first national contract did not come without sacrifices, as it required her to leave her life in Chicago for New York City. "Making the decision to move east for work was difficult," she told MLive. "I've always put my career first and it has been difficult on my personal life. I am very fortunate that my boyfriend sticks with me through all of this." At the time, Zee was dating "Storm Chasers" host Reed Timmer.

When it comes to weather reporters, Sam Champion is known as one of the greats. This is largely due to his time as a "Good Morning America" weather anchor, which lasted from 2006 through the end of 2013. While there, Champion also served as the Weather Editor for ABC News, helping to build the division's Weather, Climate and Environment Unit and overseeing all environmental coverage across ABC platforms. When Champion left for the Weather Channel, it was Ginger Zee who was tapped as his replacement — a huge deal for a 32-year-old still new(ish) to the national stage. "The words humbled and honored don't do it justice," Zee told MLive.

Zee was announced as the new "GMA" weekday weather anchor in December 2013, and she started mere days later. In addition, Zee was given the titles of Chief Meteorologist for ABC News and Managing Editor of the Climate Unit (later changed to Chief Climate Correspondent, as of 2023). This allowed her to increase her appearances on programs such as "GMA3" and "World News Tonight," and to serve as a main face of ABC News. She was also able to start a passion project, "Food Forecast," inspired by her love of wine and climate. "ABC Digital gave me the tools to create 'Food Forecast,' which is a series that dives into the science behind climate change and its impact on some of our favorite food products or agriculture," Zee explained to BookTrib.

Though Ginger Zee remained in a relationship with Reed Timmer when she left Chicago, the star was moving on from her meteorologist beau by 2012, a year after her arrival in New York City. Specifically, Zee was moving on with Ben Aaron, a journalist that she met at a charity event through a mutual friend."Through Central Park we strolled as we talked about where we lived, what we've done, and John Cusack. That's a long story," Aaron recalled of their first meeting, on Max Cool. "Finally, I got her home. We said our goodbyes, and at this point I was a goner. In love. Absolutely this was the girl that I wanted."

Even though she originally tried to friendzone Aaron via email, things quickly turned romantic and the pair became engaged in August 2013.Zee and Aaron married in June 2014, on the beach near Lake Michigan. "I am so proud to be from Michigan and I have countless memories of growing up along this gorgeous lake," Zee told People. "I wanted to have one of the most important moments of my life here and make another one of those memories." Zee now goes by Ginger Colonomos, her husband's actual last name, in her personal life (Aaron, like Zee, is a stage name).

Even before she became a mom, Ginger Zee was speaking about wanting children in interviews. So, it was not surprising when she announced the pregnancy on "Good Morning America" in June 2015, a year after getting married to Ben Aaron. Zee — who was on assignment in Palau in May 2015 when she first realized she might be expecting —welcomed her first son, Adrian Benjamin Colonomos that December. "[Watching] this person made from you and seeing the pure joy that a child can have, that is probably my favorite part – being able to be a witness to that: to somebody starting over," she said to MattStandridge.com. "It really does change the way you look at life."

As she did with her first pregnancy, Zee announced baby number two on an episode of "GMA," this time using the greenscreen's weather map as a prop. The star delivered her second son, Miles Macklin Colonomos, in February 2018and Miles made his own "GMA" debut via Skype one week after his birth despite Zee being on leave.Interestingly, it was Sam Champion — for whom Zee used to fill-in  — who subbed in for her while she was on maternity leave the first time. Second go around, Champion pulled weekend duty so that Rob Marciano, who was later fired from "GMA," could cover Zee's weekday reports.

"Dancing With the Stars" has been on the air for what feels like 300 years, with hundreds of famous faces gracing the famed dance floor in hopes of winning a Mirrorball trophy. While just about every "type" of celebrity has appeared on the show, news personalities have not exactly been as common as, say, athletes or reality stars. That said, Ginger Zee was not the first nor last reporter to compete. That particular list also includes Kenny Mayne, Giselle Fernandez, Erin Andrews, and Zee's "Good Morning America" predecessor Sam Champion.There was even another journalist, Geraldo Rivera, alongside Zee when she appeared on Season 22 of "DWTS" in 2016. 

Rivera was eliminated on Week 1 of the show, but Zee — and her "DWTS" partner Val Chmerkovskiy — made it all the way to third place. Stellar dancing was a huge factor, but so too was the meteorologist's joyful demeanor and extreme vulnerability. Zee opened up about topics such as mental health and anorexia while on the show, and also used the huge platform to speak about her love of science. "The amount of young girls that wrote me after, their moms wrote me and we started corresponding," she said to The Weather Junkies, when detailing how the experience made her a better meteorologist.

There was one more gift that came out of Ginger Zee's appearance on "Dancing With the Stars" and that was her ability to embrace the darker parts of her story publicly. She credits the show with motivating her to write her first book. "After I did 'Dancing with the Stars,' they touched on my anorexia, briefly, and the outpouring of support, families dealing with it and thanking me for sharing— it inspired me to share the rest of the story, because anorexia was only the beginning," she said to BookTrib. Zee's memoir, "Natural Disasters: I Cover Them. I Am One" was published in 2017 and became a New York Times bestseller.Zee has since written a second memoir ,"A Little Closer to Home: How I Found the Calm After the Storm," as well as a trilogy of STEM-focused books for tweens called "Chasing Helicity." 

Also in 2017, Zee and husband Ben Aaron starred in a four-episode series for the DIY Network, called "Renovation Realities: Ben & Ginger." The program documented the renovation of the couple's 1,800-square-foot fixer upper in the New York City suburbs. The reno thing was old hat for Zee, who had previous experience, but not Aaron. "He had no idea, seriously, how to hold a hammer," Zee told MLive.

When it comes to the screen, Ginger Zee has shown that she is game to try just about anything. In addition to "Dancing With the Stars" and her DIY Network show, Zee has appeared as a celebrity contestant on "Jeopardy!" and "The $100,00 Pyramid," and guest hosted both "The Chew" and "The View." Amongst other things, she has also appeared as herself on the television series "Younger," voiced an animated character on "Mission Force One," and been a guest judge on "Worst Cooks in America." And this is all in addition to her work at ABC News, which has had her appear on a slew of daytime and evening programs beyond her splashy gig on "Good Morning America."

Nothing brings out Zee's infectious joy more than her weather-focused passion projects, such as the aforementioned "Food Forecast" or the series "Hearts of Heroes," which Zee has both produced and co-hosted since its inception in 2019. The program centers on people who brave extreme weather events to rescue victims, using the human narrative to inform the public of the science behind natural disasters. Season 6 of "Hearts of Heroes" — which is available on YouTube and airs on local ABC stations — began in July 2024. 

If you or someone you know needs help with an eating disorder, is struggling with mental health, or is in crisis, contact the relevant resources below:

• Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA's Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).
• Reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
• Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.