communigator

Cindy & Chuck

Cindy (Hornburg) Zimmerman, TEL 1980*, and Chuck Zimmerman, TEL 1980, became a couple in February of 1977, standing outside Florida Gym listening to the band Styx perform a concert in the old gym.

“No, we didn’t have tickets,” laughed Cindy. “We were just hanging around outside the Stadium listening to them through the windows. We fell in love that night.”

From then on, the two were inseparable, working together for three years at WUFT-TV and attending classes together as broadcast production students.

“We were always together,” said Cindy. “We were usually scheduled to work at the same time at WUFT and we took most of the same classes. During our senior year in one of our classes the speaker said ‘broadcasters should NEVER marry other broadcasters,’ and we just looked at each other and laughed.”

They obviously didn’t share that sentiment since a few months later they married after Cindy graduated in March of 1980 and Chuck earned his diploma five months later in August. They married on September 6, 1980 at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Gainesville; their professor, Ed Wells, now retired, was the photographer behind the lens that day.

After spending time working in Gainesville, South Florida and Maryland, Cindy and Chuck moved to Missouri in 1991, working for the largest farm radio network in the country. In 2004, they accomplished their lifelong goal of starting their own company, ZimmComm New Media, and today they stay on the road, covering agricultural and renewable fuel events from coast-to-coast, doing multi-media posts for four main agricultural websites.

Today, Cindy and Chuck live in Jefferson City, Mo. with their three daughters, but are considering a move back to the Sunshine State in the next year or so.

“Most of our family are still in Florida and every time we visit, we say we’ve just got to move back,” said Cindy. “Our last trip down, we were in the Panhandle close to Pensacola and decided this is where we want to live. With technology today we can really live anywhere so we’re hoping to move near Perido Key in Pensacola.”

Perhaps, if they move quickly enough, they can catch Styx again in concert. They’re scheduled to perform at Silver Springs in Ocala on March 10, 2012.