Julie Carey, Northern Virginia bureau chief for NBC4, retiring after 34-year career at the D.C. station

Julie Carey, Northern Virginia bureau chief for NBC4 (WRC), is retiring, capping a 34-year career at the Washington station and a body of work that “helped define how the region understood itself,” reports Alexandria Living Magazine.

“Julie, you are truly phenomenal. You are respected and beloved across Alexandria, the Commonwealth, and the region,” wrote former Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg, in a post on Facebook announcing the news where more than 300 commented, adding their well wishes.

“We can all be grateful to you for all your fairness and hard work,” Silberberg said. “You will be so missed. Huge congratulations! A well-deserved retirement! I look forward to hearing more about what’s next. Wishing you and yours all good things.”

Carey joined WRC in 1992, after, states Alexandria Living, she and her husband moved to the area on April 1 with their then-young son thinking of staying for about three years. “The April Fool’s joke was on us,” she said on-air after her retirement was announced. Since then, the couple had another child and made the area their home.

Her reporting, continues the post, “carried her from neighborhood meetings, including many in Alexandria, to the halls of power in Richmond, where she covered every Virginia governor, General Assembly session and statewide election from 1993 onward — and where she was a familiar enough presence to be called on regularly to moderate and question candidates in televised debates. The Northern Virginia bureau was launched in 2012 and became an exclusive beat.”

“It has been amazing to witness and cover all the changes” over the years in Northern Virginia, she noted. Her favorite stories, she said, were about “ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.”

The post also states that Carey has been a volunteer in Alexandria’s public schools and a member of her church choir, with two children who graduated from what is now Alexandria City High School. When Alexandria Living profiled her in 2022 on her 30th anniversary at the station, she described the city she covered and called home as “a very big small town,” prizing its diversity and its sense of community.