Jamie Stelter, the NY1 traffic anchor who wakes up New Yorkers, has a morning routine of her own: At 4 a.m. nearly every day, she exchanges a text message with her mother. They’re both morning people and “very close,” she tells me, so from that text to when she goes to sleep at night, “I talk to my mom 100 times a day.”
In pre-pandemic times, Stelter’s mother, Helen Shupak, would come up to New York from her home in Philadelphia on a moment’s notice, often to help Stelter, 38, with her two toddler-aged children – Sunny and Story.
So when COVID-19 struck, the sudden forced separation from her parents for Stelter the wife of Brian Stelter, the host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” was “devastating, jarring, and really life-altering,” a reality, she said, was unfortunately far from unique to her. Now, as scores of families across the nation reunite after more than a year apart due to the pandemic, Stelter’s family was no different. With both of her parents v