CBS19’s returning anchor, Dana Hughey, center, with her twin sons, who spent the first five months of their lives in NICU in Arlington. (Contributed Photo)

With her megawatt smile and perfectly coiffed hair, Dana Hughey sits behind an anchor’s desk ready for the camera at CBS19’s Tyler studio.

Hughey returned to the station recently as anchor of “Morning Ya’ll!” after being away for a year-and-a-half.

“It was a really hard decision to make to begin with, to leave,” she said. “But it was never really intended to be a full goodbye. It was more like, ‘I’ll see you later.’ ”

Hughey left in September 2022 to care for her three children and her mother, who was battling colon cancer. Hughes said her mother had two very long surgeries and 12 chemo treatments over the course of a year.

“She really needed a caregiver during that time,” she said. “I was there to… take her where she needed to go and what she needed,” she said. “I’m also caring for three kids at the same time. So, it was just a lot.”

Hughey is a graduate of Texas A&M University and has held several positions during her career in news, including running an assignment desk and managing editor.

“I love East Texans,” she said. “I love coming into their homes every day. I love making them smile in the morning.”

Hughey worked at CBS19 for several years as a morning news anchor, primarily as the host of “The Morning Show.” She also hosted “Totally East Texas.”

“I’ve done most of my career in the mornings,” she said. “I did a little stint in the evenings but for whatever reason, mornings feel more like me.”

Hughey said she likes the early morning hours.

“It’s like a fresh start every day and … seems like the happiest hours to me,” she said.

While working as an anchor at KTLV, Hughey was pregnant with twin boys, but she said it was a difficult pregnancy, prompting less time in the newsroom.

“A lot of people will know that I took a step away from my career when my twins were born… and I didn’t have any intention to do that,” she said. “But they were born at 25 weeks, and when that happened, I sort of disappeared from the airwaves.”

She was put on bedrest at 19 weeks, and several weeks later, her twins came through an unstoppable labor. Because there was no NICU available in East Texas, the Hugheys spent a lot of time in Arlington, where the new mom was hospitalized, Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, where the newborns were hospitalized.

“It was a very uncertain time for us,” Hughey said. “One baby spent five months in the hospital, and another spent almost six months in the hospital.”

With the need to care for her newborns, Hughey said she believed she couldn’t work.

“They needed me and … I needed them,” she said.

While she was staying at home with her family, she started a blog called “Keeping up with the Hugheys.”

“Blogs were kind of a new thing, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it,” Hughey said. “My husband started it, and then it became an outlet for me to stay connected to people who cared and were praying for my babies. But to this day, people know me through that blog. … When I’m at the grocery store, they’ll ask me how the babies are doing.”

For more than a year, she stayed home with the twins and then went back on TV part time but became pregnant with her daughter and stayed home for another year. Around that time, she came back to the news business, but this time with CBS19.

“It’s such a great place to work and such a great place to also have a family,” Hughey said. “With mom doing well, my kids are older — they will soon be driving — I felt it was time to come back. I’ve missed everyone. I just miss connecting with (the viewers) and being part of their daily lives and… the timing was right.”

When she’s not busy being a mom and a morning anchor, she likes to stay in shape — mostly by jogging — and staying involved with the community.

“I feel like I have all my best ideas and story ideas and life ideas while I’m on a run,” Hughey said. “I like being out in nature. I really don’t like to do it on a treadmill, so I like to be out just in beautiful East Texas and then take my allergy medicine afterwards!”

Whether it’s her daughter playing soccer or her twin boys running cross country or participating in debate, she said she also enjoys being involved with her kids’ lives.

“I love being their mom,” Hughey said.

She is also involved in helping children across Texas and East Texas, which resulted in many years volunteering for the Children’s Miracle Network and serving on the NICU board at Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, where her twins spent the first five months of their lives

“Anytime that we could help raise money for that NICU, or things that were going into that NICU, I was all on board with that because what a great blessing for those families that they didn’t have to leave their homes for six months like we did,” Hughey said.

No matter what role she steps into in the morning, Hughey said she loves telling stories and informing the people of East Texas.

“There have been monumental stories that have changed people’s lives here in East Texas,” she said. “And I feel privileged to tell those stories.”