PANORA, Iowa, January 3, 2010 – Kevin Cooney, the veteran KCCI-TV news anchor and an avid bicyclist, will be the featured speaker for the third annual membership banquet of the Raccoon River Valley Trail Association to be held here on Saturday, February 20.

The event is set for the Lake Panorama National Resort & Conference Center, just north of Panora.  A silent auction and social time will begin at 6 p.m., with the banquet meal at 7 p.m. and the silent auction continuing until 8:15 p.m.  Cooney will speak at 7:30 p.m., with a live auction following.

The $25 banquet tickets are available now.  You can access a handy ticket order form by clicking here.  Print it out, fill out the information and send it with your check to the mailing address on the form.   The deadline for reservations is February 15.

Proceeds from the banquet and the auctions are used by the RRVT Association to help develop, market and promote the trail; for special events held on it, and also to promote all the communities along the RRVT.

The banquets each of the last two years have been attended by more than 150 association members, who’ve donated about $8,500 each year with their auction purchases.

Kevin Cooney, news anchor for KCCI-TV in Des Moines, is a frequent rider on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. (Photo from www.kcci.com)

Kevin Cooney and his wife Mollie have both been news anchors and reporters for the Channel 8 news in Des Moines since 1982.

Kevin started working at the station, in the production department, in the late 1960s when he was in high school, and began doing sports reporting for TV8 in 1972 while he was a student at Iowa State University.  After graduating from ISU in ’74, he became a full-time TV8 news and features reporter.  In 1979, he and Mollie left to join the news staff at KNTV in San  Jose, California, for three years before returning to KCCI.  They’ve been anchors on central Iowa’s leading TV news team ever since.

Kevin said his bicycling began in his boyhood, “riding a 3-speed English race bike however far it was from my house to Holy Trinity” church and school, but he basically gave it up in his high school years.  In adulthood, he and Mollie “started riding occasionally on a couple of super-heavy Schwinn ‘Collegiates’ we had, but we never really rode much until about five or six years ago.

“Our daughter was showing some interest in biking then, and I bought her a nice new road bike,” Kevin said. “As soon as I hopped on it and took a short ride, I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a real bike!’ ”

He said when he realized how much smoother his daughter’s new bike rode than his own Schwinn and an old mountain bike he also had, he ordered a Specialized “Sequoia” model for himself.  A year or two ago, Mollie moved up to Trek road bike and “now she’s really become enthusiastic about riding the trails,” Kevin said.

He said his own cycling mileage has “probably averaged 2,000 to 3,000 miles a year for the last several years.  I haven’t been able to keep a total number of miles I’ve done over the years, because I’ve got this problem of odometers continually falling off my handlebars and getting lost.”

He said he usually does “two to three days of RAGBRAI each summer.  I’d like to do a whole one, but RAGBRAI always happens during the July ratings period for TV news, so I can’t be gone for a whole week then.”

He said he especially enjoys it “when I can commute to work by bicycle, but I also like going on morning rides.  Since I don’t go in to work until about 2 in the afternoon, I can go out for a good recreational ride in the morning.  I usually head out on the trails when I ride, and I love it when I can get in 30 to 40 miles.  I think I’ve ridden on every trail in central Iowa, but the ones I do most often are the Raccoon River Valley Trail, the Saylorville trail going north out of Des Moines and the Great Western Trail going south to Martensdale.”

Here are a couple of fun photos of Kevin Cooney, after he’d completed the 2007 “BRR” round-trip ride between Perry and Rippey in sub-zero weather.  On the left, he’s enjoying some hot chili, and on the right, he shows how he duct-taped his booties to his tights to keep away the freezing air!

He has also ridden on “BRR” (Bike Ride to Rippey, from Perry) several times, including the below-zero one in 2007.

In more normal weather, he treasures his time on a bike.

“What I like most about bicycling is that it really clears your head,” Kevin said. “It’s both mentally and physically therapeutic.  I’ve been a runner through the years, and running does the same thing for me.  But the difference is, bicycling over running, that you see more and go farther.”

The Cooneys have a family membership in the RRVT Association, and Kevin said he thinks Mollie will probably be joining him in attending the banquet.

Items to be available in the auctions will be listed on this Internet site in mid-February.