‘It was a difficult time of shifting how I saw myself’: Seven presenter Angela Cox reveals double heartbreak

In an emotional interview, Angela Cox reflects on the dual heartbreak of losing her mum as her own ‘window to motherhood closed’.

As Angela Cox unclipped her microphone at the end of anchoring a Friday evening news bulletin, she had a strong sense she needed to return to the palliative care home where her mum’s four-year battle with brain cancer was slowly coming to an end.

“I’d been with Mum all day,” she recounts of her final moments with her mum two years ago.

“Normally I’d go home after work because she would sleep but that evening something didn’t feel right. I sat with her, taking her vital signs.

“My brother, sister and brother-in-law were there and we stayed with her all night.”

Angela Cox lost her mother, Larelle, two years ago. Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

The next morning Cox popped out to grab a round of coffees. Within two minutes of her return her 71-year-old mum Larelle took her last breath.

“It’s very much my mother that she would be dramatic and die the day before Mother’s Day so we’ll never ever forget that. She had a flare for the drama,” says Cox, tears spilling as she laughs at the memory.

But what viewers, who’ve watched Cox’s assured rise from foreign correspondent and Spotlight reporter to host of evening news show, The Latest, and now the coveted position of co-anchor of the 6pm Sydney news, wouldn’t know is that she was harbouring dual heartbreak.

Because as she watched her mother’s life ebb away, Cox was also confronting another painful reality – the fading possibility of becoming a mother herself.

“That period of time was also the period of time I realised that the fairy-tale I’d imagined of having the house, husband and two kids wasn’t going to work out that way for me,” says Cox.

“When the window to motherhood closed it was a difficult time of shifting how I saw myself and my life and having to embrace the positives.”

‘He was an ally from the start.’ Angela Cox, right, with her Seven colleague, Mark Ferguson. Picture: News Corp Australia

Cox’s attempts to have a child are private but she’s forthcoming about the unique grief landscape she traversed as she not only farewelled her mum but relinquished the dream of having children of her own.

“I felt like I had a ton of bricks on my chest when I was losing my mum but there was also a silver lining because it made me remember to live large and appreciate my life even if it wasn’t quite what I planned,” she says. “I refuse to be a person who becomes bitter, resentful, sad and joyless because I don’t have what I thought I was going to have.”

Her appointment seven months ago to co-host Sydney’s prime time news alongside Mark Ferguson coincided with a tumultuous period for the commercial television networks but Cox’s gravitas and warmth made her a natural for the role.

Angela Cox the set of Seven News. Picture: Seven

‘I’m rebranding and this is going to be my rebel era.’

She reveals that Ferguson took her aside and made clear they would be equal partners rather than veteran and newcomer.

“He was an ally from the start,” she says.

But if Cox has the news anchor’s poise she also possesses the newshound’s playfulness.

She was widely teased by her colleagues for taking a homemade cake to lunch with Seven Network chairman Kerry Stokes – “I bake for billionaires,” she quips.

She’s also rather cross she didn’t capitalise on meeting Prince Harry when they were both single (she’d divorced amicably after a short marriage in her early 30s).

“If I had known Harry had a soft spot for older divorced women …” she says mischievously.

Born in Mackay, Cox, her twin sister Belinda and older brother Jason moved constantly during their childhood due to their dad’s job and their mum’s whimsy. It’s made the trio close but also adaptable.

While she spent four of her 25 years with the Seven Network as US correspondent, visiting the White House and covering terror attacks including the Boston bombing, Cox has also taken leave without pay to travel and enjoy new experiences.

Indeed, her determination not to be defined by heartbreak or her job – an older colleague warned her to always nourish other elements – is part of the reason she’s taken up surfing, hitting the waves at Sydney’s Bondi before work.

She’s even booked a second surf camp in Indonesia where she plans to embrace her life’s unexpected choreography by learning to dance up and down a longboard.

“I’m rebranding and this is going to be my rebel era,” she says, channelling the gratitude she now practises.

“I’m going to have the most adventurous, colourful life. I’ve experienced beautiful passionate love in my life and I want to keep having deep, meaningful connections until I die. Like my mum, I’m going to live my best life.”

Read the full interview with Angela Cox inside today’s Stellar via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA). For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.

Originally published as ‘It was a difficult time of shifting how I saw myself’: Seven presenter Angela Cox reveals double heartbreak