Golden touch Morning-show veteran swaps microphone for macchiatos at new Corydon café By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026

Good news if you were used to having your morning coffee with Terri Gale, who earlier this summer signed off from CTV Your Morning, after 15 years on the job.

Gale, the three-hour program’s longtime weather expert, and her husband Rob Gale, the ex-head soccer coach of FC Valour and co-founder of the Northern Super League’s new Winnipeg franchise, are the owners of Golden Hour Café and Bar at 775 Corydon Ave.

Gale (formerly Apostle) nods when she is asked who would know more about caffeinated beverages than a person who, for the last decade and a half, set her alarm to go off in the wee small hours.

“I do love coffee and take mine black. Except because I hate burning my tongue — not a good thing when you speak for a living — I got into the habit of throwing a couple of ice cubes in my cup, to be on the safe side,” Gale says, seated on the second level of their attractive, 2,100-square-foot premises, which officially opened in mid-September.

And while Gale doesn’t anticipate pouring lattés and cappuccinos for guests — she promises to leave that to their expert 12-member staff that includes her 18-year-old son, Jack — she is looking forward to greeting her old viewers who happen by for coffee, tea or, later in the day, the locale’s signature sangria.

“I’ll be here most mornings helping out with whatever and I’m definitely looking forward to connecting with fans of the show I never had the chance to meet,” she says, casually dressed in jeans and a collarless black top. “I received so many messages after announcing I was leaving — all very sweet — so it will be nice to say hi to some of those people, and thank them for their support through the years.”

Gale, born Terri Ivanochko, grew up on a farm near Preeceville, Sask. The majority of the kids in her community were heavily involved with sports — even the girls. She was more drawn to music, mind you, making her somewhat of an outcast. Fortunately, her parents’ cows were a receptive audience, she chuckles, and, with no place else to showcase her talents, she regularly serenaded them with selections from Oliver! and Showboat.

Gale originally intended to follow in her mother’s footsteps by becoming a school teacher. That changed the morning she went to enrol at the University of Regina, and spotted a hallway poster reading “singers and dancers wanted.” On the spot, she convinced her mom to drive her across town to try out for Saskatchewan Express, a touring company that to this day performs musical revues throughout Western Canada.

She spent a year with the troupe, then two years studying theatre at Red Deer Polytechnic, in Red Deer, Alta. That led to a two-year stint acting and singing in light-hearted dinner theatre productions, first in Edmonton and Calgary with Jubilations, and later in Winnipeg, with Celebrations Dinner Theatre. (A move to Winnipeg in the early 2000s coincided with her marriage to her first husband, Randy Apostle, Celebrations’ artistic director.)

One morning in 2002, Gale and her then-husband were watching The Big Breakfast, back when it was hosted by current SportsCentre personality Jay Onrait. The show was a mix of news and entertainment and at some point her husband remarked, “You know, you’d be fantastic at something like that.” She heeded his advice, soon earning a diploma from a local broadcasting academy.

Following a radio career that included stops at 92.1 CITI FM, KY-58 and 1290 CFRW — at the latter, she teamed up with legendary jock Don Percy — she successfully auditioned for a vacant on-air position in 2007 with Breakfast Television, The Big Breakfast’s successor. Let us guess: she was an immediate hit with viewing audiences and everything went silky smooth, right? Wrong.

“I was awful, just dreadful,” she says, noting Citytv was where she ceased going by her maiden name in favour of Apostle, owing to producers instructing her that Ivanochko and Ljungberg, her co-host Jon Ljungberg’s surname, was a poor fit.

“I assumed I was to going to go there and get shown the ropes — or at least meet some of the staff — but they mic’d me up on my first day and said, ‘You’re on in three minutes,’” she says, her eyes widening. “I turned to Jon and asked, ‘What do we do?’ He answered, ‘It ain’t rocket science, kid. You look at the camera and talk.’ All of a sudden, a voice was counting down from 10 and there I was, scared shitless.”

Gale eventually got the hang of things, and began producing engaging lifestyle segments in addition to her regular duties. She’d grown so confident in her abilities that upon being summoned to a meeting with management 18 months into the job, she showed up expecting to be offered a promotion. Imagine her surprise when she was informed that the station was moving in a different direction, and she was being let go.

Gale didn’t stay unemployed for long. Within a week, she caught on with the Canadian Traffic Network, delivering radio reports on construction zones and fender benders from a helicopter hovering 500 feet above the city. It was a dream job, she says, especially since her son was still in diapers.

“It basically allowed me to be a stay-at-home mom,” she says. “I’d leave him with the sitter at 2 (p.m.) — his nap time — and be back by 6:30 (p.m.), after flying around for a few hours in my faux leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, I was such a poseur.”

In June 2011, Sylvia Kuzyk let it be known that she would be retiring from her weather anchor position at CTV, a role she’d filled for 38 years. Figuring “What’s the worst that could happen?” Gale threw her hat in the ring to be Kuzyk’s replacement on the 6 p.m. news hour. No sooner was she informed the gig was hers if she wanted it than the station introduced a new program to its lineup. CTV Morning Live, as it was then called, would air from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Monday to Friday. Gale inquired if she could possibly do that instead.

“I was already used to mornings, from my days on the radio and at Citytv,” she states. “Plus, morning shows are more about levity. I liked to push the envelope a bit by not taking myself too seriously, and the evening newscast isn’t the place for that. I say with great conviction that if I’d been on at 6 p.m., I would never have lasted.”

Gale says there were a number of factors that led to her decision to depart CTV in June. Firstly, she met her second husband, the father of two grown daughters, in the early stages of the pandemic and because a professional soccer coach generally leads a transient lifestyle, she wasn’t certain how long they’d remain in Winnipeg if their relationship blossomed. (The pair tied the knot in June 2025.)

Secondly, she had grown weary of seemingly endless layoffs in the media industry, and detested the nervousness she felt, wondering whether she’d be the next one to get shown the door. Finally, she had become keenly interested in hypnotherapy, even spending parts of 2024 training online with an expert in the field to become a registered hypnotherapist herself.

“That got me thinking, rather than continuing to drive myself nuts worrying about layoffs, why not just do (hypnotherapy) instead?” she says, adding she’s also a couple of years away from a milestone birthday, so the timing seemed right.

Gale had already set the wheels in motion to join a St. Norbert-based wellness centre when Rob returned home in March from a men’s league soccer game and broached the topic of opening a coffee shop at the suggestion of one of his team members, Jay Colosimo, the owner of Colosimo Coffee Roasters. She laughs, saying many’s the time she has proposed this or that, and how Rob’s response in every instance has been, “Great idea. Let’s do it.”

Given that, she felt it was her turn to utter, “great idea,” despite not knowing the first thing about running a café.

They received the keys to their space, most recently a hookah lounge, on May 1. The two of them spent the next four months doing renovations as well as developing a food menu focused on small plates such as avocado toast, beet-burrata salad and banana pudding. An expansive outdoor patio opened earlier this week to coincide with extended hours, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

“Those hours are a bit of a work in progress. We’ll likely see what the reception is like and take it from there,” Gale says, noting her alarm presently goes off at 7:10 a.m., a luxury she’s still getting used to.

Of her friends from television, Gale says a number of them have already popped by to check out her new digs, and catch up over a cuppa joe.

“I’ll always have those relationships, of course, and it’s great having a space they can come to, to hang out on a different level than in a TV studio. And who knows?” she says with a wink. “Since there’s a lounge, I might be seeing even more of them than I used to.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca