News 2’s Carolyn Murray talks resilience amid health battle

Under the glow of chandeliers at the Daniel Island Club, Carolyn Murray didn’t open her Speaker Series talk with her health journey; she opened with a joke. 

“You all really want Rob (Fowler) right now, don’t you?” she laughed, nodding to Charleston’s beloved weatherman and the looming possibility of snow. It was a fitting start from one of the city’s most familiar news faces. 

Murray, co-anchor of Count on News 2 on WCBD-TV, didn’t come to the Jan. 21 Daniel Island Community Speaker Series to talk about television news. She came there to talk about survival, storytelling, and what it means to keep moving forward when life takes an unexpected turn. 

For many in the audience, Murray is best known behind the anchor desk. Fewer know she is also an avid athlete – having run eight marathons and 27 Cooper River Bridge Runs – and a certified spin, barre, and yoga instructor who prides herself on caring for her body. Which is why what happened in early 2020 caught her completely off guard. 

“The day my life changed forever was March 14, 2020. I remember that day so well because my husband and I were in the bedroom,” she said, with a wink.  

Just days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Murray received a call from her neurosurgeon, following an MRI ordered after weeks of unexplained symptoms: weak legs, numb feet, and a persistent tingling in her hands. “He said, ‘You have tumors on your spinal cord, and you need surgery.’” 

Within days, she went from newsroom anchor to hospital patient, walking alone into MUSC because visitors were not allowed. 

“I walked into that hospital alone and scared as heck,” she said. 

After surgery, doctors discovered not only tumors but neurosarcoidosis – a rare inflammatory disease. What she thought would be a weekend stay in the hospital ended up being a much longer, lonelier stay. “I no longer had the ability to walk. I couldn’t even hold a toothbrush,” she said, describing how she spent nearly three months in hospitals and rehabilitation without being able to see her family. 

“Everything about my identity was different,” she said. “I was scared. I was angry. Inside that hospital, I felt like a prisoner.” 

Yet it was there, in isolation, that Murray began to reframe her suffering through prayer and perspective. “When things are good, you pray. And when things are bad, you pray harder,” she said, recalling her upbringing as a preacher’s kid. 

She leaned into the power of stories, the same force that led her into journalism in the first place. She spoke of a childhood neighbor, Sadie Oglesby, who introduced her to storytelling and inspired her love of communication. She recalled interviewing civil rights icon John Lewis and asking how he continued after being brutally beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. 

“He said he realized that it was more important to use his life for the good than any pain that he might suffer,” Murray said. “I did my best to keep moving forward.” 

Murray also reflected on meeting Oprah Winfrey and asking her what success truly meant. 

“She said, ‘Success means doing work every single day with the same amount of integrity, whether a million people see it or only you know what you do.’” 

That message stayed with her as she quietly tried yoga poses in her hospital room, even when they barely worked. 

Her love for journalism, she explained, is inseparable from who she is. “I never imagined I would do anything other than this,” Murray said. “Communication to me is everything. It’s how we connect with each other.” 

Today, Murray still lives with two incurable spinal conditions, yet she stood before the Daniel Island audience in heels, with a smile. 

“Look at me today,” she said. “I have transformed the most difficult period in my life into a triumph. The power of resilience is within us all if we keep moving forward.”