Who Is Danita Harris’s Husband? – The Full Story of Cleveland’s Nine-Time Emmy Award-Winning Anchor, Her Marriage to Brad Pratt, and a Life Built on Faith, Service, and Purpose

There are television journalists who deliver the news, and then there are those who understand the news — who feel its weight, who carry the stories they cover into their personal lives and let those stories shape what they do off-camera. Danita Harris is firmly in the second category. She has been one of Cleveland, Ohio’s most recognisable and trusted broadcast journalists for more than three decades, collecting nine Emmy Awards along the way, being inducted into the Ohio Broadcasters Hall of Fame, earning an Edward R. Murrow Award, and being added to the Library of Congress’s HistoryMakers Collection in 2023.

But the biography that most people want to read is not purely the professional one. They want to know who stands beside this woman of remarkable energy and faith — who is Danita Harris’s husband, and what does the personal life of one of Cleveland’s most beloved news anchors actually look like?

The answer is Brad Pratt — a residential therapist, a man of deep faith, the son of a Pentecostal bishop, and the person with whom Danita co-founded a church, built a blended family, and has shared what she describes as a life anchored in God rather than in television ratings.

Danita Harris Biography

Early Life and Background

Danita Harris was born and raised in Chester, Pennsylvania, from a working-class African-American family

Chester is a small city in Delaware County, just south of Philadelphia — historically one of Pennsylvania’s industrial towns, shaped by shipbuilding and manufacturing, and also one of the Commonwealth’s most economically challenged communities. Growing up there in the 1960s and 1970s as a Black American girl, in a working-class family, gave Danita a foundation that would later make her journalism more than just a professional exercise. It gave her a reason to tell stories that the mainstream often ignored.

Her parents are Mattie and Theron Harris, who currently reside in Strongsville, Ohio. Danita credits her mother, a businesswoman, as a significant influence in her life

The family’s move from Chester to the Strongsville area of Ohio brought them into Danita’s professional orbit — and into some of the most meaningful moments of her personal life, including her engagement, which took place in front of her parents.

Danita grew up as a very active girl who developed a passion for broadcasting from an early age. That early passion was not abstract. She was drawn specifically to television, specifically to the idea of speaking to people through a screen — a calling she has now been answering for more than three decades.

Education 

After earning her degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Maryland, Danita began her illustrious career

The University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism is one of the most respected journalism schools in the United States — producing graduates who go on to anchor nationally and internationally. For Danita Harris, it was the formal training ground for instincts she had been developing since childhood: how to ask the right questions, how to tell a story that matters, and how to communicate across the enormous diversity of American experience.

Career Journey 

The Washington D.C. Years — BET and WJLA

Since the start of her career as a producer at BET, Danita’s charisma, poise, and compelling storytelling on-air have been a testament to her success.

Beginning her career as a producer rather than an on-air talent is significant. Producers understand the architecture of a story — what to keep, what to cut, where the narrative turns. That producing background gave Danita a structural intelligence about storytelling that purely on-air journalists sometimes lack.

She first began her career as a journalist at a popular Black Entertainment Television Network and then at WJLA ABC News 7 in Washington, D.C. During her time at WJLA News, Harris was honored by the organization of Black Women in Sisterhood for Action due to her incredible work and dedication in 2006.

Washington, D.C. is one of the most competitive television markets in America, and working there — particularly at WJLA, the ABC affiliate — meant covering stories of national consequence in real time. It was also in Washington that she formed a friendship with gospel singer Daniel Winans that would later play a pivotal role in her wedding ceremony.

WCPO Cincinnati — Regional Emmy Recognition

She then left WJLA News and joined WCPO in Cincinnati to work as a journalist and correspondent. At WCPO, Danita received three regional Emmy Awards for Best Daytime Newscast.

Three regional Emmys at a single station is a substantial early career achievement. It signals a journalist who is not merely competent at the mechanics of television news, but who brings something distinctive to the screen — a quality that audiences recognise and that award judges confirm.

WEWS Cleveland — Twenty-Five Years at the Heart of Northeast Ohio

Danita’s love for the Cleveland area grew almost immediately after joining the “Morning Exchange” and the early morning show as a live feature reporter for WEWS in 1998. Her passion for Cleveland aided in her return to the city in 2000 from Washington, DC, where she had worked as a reporter and weekend evening anchor at WJLA-TV.

The WEWS chapter is the central chapter of Danita Harris’s career — twenty-five years at Cleveland’s ABC affiliate, during which she became one of the most recognised and trusted faces in Northeast Ohio television.

She co-anchored “Good Morning Cleveland” and also worked alongside Ted Henry for the evening and late newscasts. In 2020, she returned to “Good Morning Cleveland.”

The awards that accumulated during those years are remarkable in their range. She is a nine-time Emmy Award winner, and recipient of RTDNA’s Edward R. Murrow Award in 2021 for her podcast “Voices for Change.” The podcast episodes highlighted the diversity of thought, authentic expression, and enlightening perspectives on topics and issues affecting the world.

She was recognised as a woman who has made significant contributions to American life, history, and culture, and was added to the “HistoryMakers Collection” at the Library of Congress in 2023.

The HistoryMakers Collection at the Library of Congress is one of the most significant recognitions in American cultural life — a multimedia archive of the stories of Black Americans who have shaped the nation’s history. Being added to it places Danita Harris in the company of the most consequential figures in African-American public life.

She was inducted into the Ohio Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2010 and was awarded Journalist of the Year from the Public Children’s Services Association of Ohio for her work to increase public awareness of child protection. She is also the recipient of the prestigious Chuck Heaton Award from The Press Club of Cleveland.

WKYC — A New Chapter Beginning in 2024

Before joining WKYC in April 2024, Danita had a long and successful career at WEWS in Cleveland for 25 years and also worked at WJLA in Washington D.C. and Black Entertainment Television. She is now a news anchor at WKYC Studios in Cleveland, Ohio, co-anchoring the “GO!” morning show on weekdays from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m.

The move from WEWS to WKYC — Cleveland’s NBC affiliate — was, by her own description, bittersweet. “It’s bittersweet… WEWS will always be special to me!” she wrote on social media when she departed. But the new chapter at WKYC represents a continuation of a career that shows no sign of slowing down.

National Television Presence

Danita’s infectious charm was shared on national TV while serving as a guest host on ABC’s “The View,” “Kelly and Ryan,” and interviewing talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

Guest hosting The View is not a casual achievement — it requires the kind of comfort with live, unscripted multi-perspective conversation that only experience and genuine intellectual preparation can provide. The Oprah Winfrey interview speaks for itself.

Who Is Danita Harris’s Husband? — Brad Pratt

Harris is currently and happily married to her husband Brad Pratt. He met Harris in May 2005 and got engaged on December 17, 2005, right in front of Harris’s parents who live in Strongsville.

They celebrated the engagement by going to Johnny Rockets for burgers and fries. That detail — an engagement celebrated at a casual diner rather than a fine restaurant — tells you something about the texture of their relationship. It was grounded, warm, and entirely without pretension.

Who Is Brad Pratt?

Brad Pratt is a residential therapist for the Youth Development Center in Hudson, Ohio.

Brad Pratt is not a public figure in the conventional sense. He works in therapeutic services for young people — a profession built on patience, empathy, and the kind of sustained attention to human behaviour that does not generate television coverage but changes lives quietly, day by day.

Danita Harris can legitimately lay claim to having one of the city’s biggest weddings of 2006 — so big, in fact, that her June 10 nuptials to Brad Pratt were conducted in a church other than their own just to accommodate the approximately 600 guests.

The WEWS-TV morning-and-noon anchor explains that her father-in-law is a bishop in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, where parishioners invite all members of the “church family” to their weddings. Danita and Brad followed suit and extended the same courtesy to members of Mega Church, the nondenominational house of worship they attended in Cleveland.

The wedding itself was a genuinely spectacular event — not in the celebrity-excess sense, but in the joyful, faith-centred sense that reflects who Danita and Brad actually are.

The showstopper was when Danita walked down the aisle while Daniel Winans, of the gospel-singing Winans family, sang “I Knew This Day Would Come.” In doing so, Winans fulfilled a promise made to Danita years earlier, after the two became friends while she was working in Washington, D.C., for the BET cable network, that he would write and perform a song for her wedding.

“I had one of those interactive, crazy weddings,” Danita recalls. There was no alcohol at the wedding except for a champagne toast.

The couple left early the next morning to recover in a real tropical paradise: the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Children –  A Blended, Adopted Family Built on Love

Brad had a daughter from a previous marriage, named Kanecia, who Danita cherishes as one of her own. The couple then adopted a baby named Chase after they became officially married.

The decision to adopt — to deliberately open their home and hearts to a child who needed them — is consistent with everything else known about Danita Harris’s character. Her professional work has consistently centred on the most vulnerable members of society, particularly children. The adoption of Chase was not a public relations gesture. It was the private expression of values she lives publicly every day.

According to Danita, “Spending time with those two are my top favorite hobbies.”

Fresh Wind Ministries – The Church They Built Together

Danita and her husband Brad started their church, Fresh Wind Ministries, back in 2015 and, according to many members of the church, they have since discovered a more “spiritually healthy life.”

Co-founding a church is not a minor biographical footnote. It represents a commitment of time, energy, community responsibility, and spiritual conviction that goes well beyond casual religious affiliation. Fresh Wind Ministries reflects both Danita’s identity as an ordained reverend and Brad’s identity as the son of a Pentecostal bishop — two people who met in faith, married in faith, and built something institutional in faith.

Danita’s ordination as a reverend is one of the less-discussed but most significant dimensions of her public identity. Beyond her work in journalism, Danita is an ordained reverend. The two callings — journalism and ministry — are not as separate as they might seem. Both are fundamentally about truth-telling, about bearing witness to human experience, and about serving a community that trusts you to speak honestly on their behalf.

S.H.I.N.E. – The Nonprofit That Became Her Third Career

S.H.I.N.E. is a nonprofit organisation founded by Danita in 2016 to provide mentorship and community support for women and children

Within four years of instilling confidence, self-worth, and the freedom to dream big within hundreds of girls who have graduated from the programme, Danita appointed former NFL Cleveland Browns Player, Josh Cribbs, as Director of S.H.I.N.E. Brothers, to nurture young boys. This dedication and impact sparked another expansion in 2023 with the creation of S.H.I.N.E. Men of Integrity, which focused on bringing men together for fellowship while supporting local charities that service hurting men.

Danita’s commitment to mentorship has recently expanded beyond northeast Ohio as she is now an official mentor with the Baton Exchange Program. This faith-based programme matches young adults with successful professionals in their desired career path across the US. Her current mentee resides in North Carolina and is seeking a career in journalism.

The progression from S.H.I.N.E. for girls, to S.H.I.N.E. Brothers for boys, to S.H.I.N.E. Men of Integrity for adult men reflects an organisation that has grown organically in response to community need — exactly the kind of institutional development that sustains itself beyond the founding personality.

Community Involvement and Board Service

Danita is a part of many organisations and clubs in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Some of these are the National Council of Negro Women, the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, and Delta Sigma Theta

She also volunteers as a board advisor to the Girls Club of Ohio

The National Council of Negro Women recognised Danita as one of the Outstanding Women in Ministry in Cuyahoga County.

Each of these affiliations represents not a titular position but an active engagement with organisations doing real work in Cleveland’s communities. The Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, Delta Sigma Theta, and the National Council of Negro Women are organisations with specific missions and specific demands on the time of their board members and advisors.

Personal Interests and Personality

During her free time, she enjoys listening to music that moves her like jazz and gospel or sometimes R&B and pop.

The musical range — jazz to gospel to R&B and pop — reflects the breadth of a personality that does not neatly fit one category. Jazz is intellectual and improvisational. Gospel is devotional and communal. R&B and pop are joyful and accessible. All of them, in different ways, describe Danita Harris.

Her social media presence, primarily on X (Twitter), reflects the same warmth and directness that define her on-air persona. She is enthusiastic about Cleveland’s sports teams, openly joyful about milestones in her personal life, and consistently generous in her engagement with her audience.

Net Worth and Salary

Danita Harris earns an annual salary ranging from approximately $100,000 to $350,000. As of 2025, her estimated net worth falls between $1 million and $8 million. Her primary source of income is her successful career as a broadcast journalist.

The range in the net worth estimate reflects the genuine uncertainty in publicly available data about broadcast journalist compensation at the local and regional level. What is certain is that a career spanning 35+ years at major stations, including nine Emmy Awards and national television guest appearances, generates substantial cumulative earnings. Her additional income from public speaking, ministry work, and nonprofit leadership contributes to a diversified financial profile.

Tribe, Religion, and Nationality

Danita Harris is an American national of African-American ethnicity, born in Chester, Pennsylvania. She is a devout Christian — specifically within the Pentecostal and non-denominational traditions — and an ordained reverend who has co-founded a church with her husband. Her faith is not incidental to her biography. It is structural. It shapes her journalism, her nonprofit work, her marriage, her parenting, and the way she understands her role in the community she has served for three and a half decades.

Conclusion

Danita Harris is one of those rare public figures whose professional life and personal life tell the same story from different angles. The journalist who has won nine Emmys is also the ordained reverend who co-founded Fresh Wind Ministries. The anchor who has sat across from Oprah Winfrey is also the woman who celebrated her engagement at Johnny Rockets. The HistoryMakers Collection inductee is also the mother who adopted a child and raised a stepdaughter as her own, because that is what love requires. Brad Pratt — the residential therapist, the bishop’s son, the man who proposed in front of her parents in Strongsville — is not a footnote in Danita Harris’s biography. He is the person with whom she built the life that makes all the professional achievement meaningful.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Who is Danita Harris’s husband? Danita Harris is married to Brad Pratt, a residential therapist for the Youth Development Center in Hudson, Ohio. He met Harris in May 2005, and they got engaged on December 17, 2005, right in front of Harris’s parents in Strongsville. They married on June 10, 2006, in a ceremony attended by approximately 600 guests.

2. How old is Danita Harris? Danita Harris was born around 1964 in Chester, Pennsylvania, making her approximately 56 to 58 years old as of 2025. Her exact birthdate has not been publicly confirmed.

3. Where is Danita Harris from? Danita Harris was born and raised in Chester, Pennsylvania, from a working-class African-American family. She has lived and worked in the Cleveland, Ohio area for the majority of her professional career

4. What awards has Danita Harris won? She is a nine-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of RTDNA’s Edward R. Murrow Award in 2021 for her podcast “Voices for Change.” She is an Ohio Broadcasters Hall of Fame inductee (2010) and was added to the HistoryMakers Collection at the Library of Congress in 2023.

5. Does Danita Harris have children? Brad had a daughter from a previous marriage, named Kanecia, who Danita cherishes as one of her own. The couple also adopted a baby named Chase after they became officially married

6. Where does Danita Harris work now? Danita Harris is a news anchor at WKYC Studios in Cleveland, Ohio. She joined the station as a morning anchor on April 8, 2024, co-anchoring the “GO!” morning show alongside Dave Chudowsky and Senior Meteorologist Matt Wintz.

7. What is Danita Harris’s net worth? As of 2025, her estimated net worth falls between $1 million and $8 million, with her primary source of income being her successful career as a broadcast journalist.

8. Is Danita Harris a reverend? Yes. Beyond her work in journalism, Danita Harris is an ordained reverend. She and her husband Brad started Fresh Wind Ministries in 2015