Romi Bean didn’t take the job to make history or make a statement. She simply wanted to chase her passion.

“I love sports, I love my job and I love this Colorado community,” she said. “But I never thought I’d be the first to do something like this.”

Bean was recently named CBS News Colorado’s lead sports anchor for the 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts, becoming the first woman in Denver television history to fill that prime-time role.

“It’s about damn time!” said Kristine Strain, Channel 4’s vice president of news.

Strain chuckled when she said it, but she was celebrating the significance of Bean’s promotion.

Bean, 36, replaces Michael Spencer, who will soon become a full-time news anchor and take over for Jim Benemann when he retires at the end of March.

“I’m so proud of Romi,” said Spencer, who’s worked with Bean since 2018 when Bean became the station’s No. 2 sports anchor. “You have to give her a lot of credit because it’s not easy to come into the Denver sports market and assert yourself. She did a really good job of that.”

One of the first people to congratulate Bean was Jenny Cavnar, a baseball reporter and studio host for Rockies games on AT&T SportsNet. In April 2018, Cavnar did the play-by-play of a Rockies game, becoming the first woman to call a big-league game on TV in 25 years.

“It’s a well-deserved honor for Romi,” said Cavnar. “Romi’s worked so hard to get this. I don’t think the average viewer sees everything that goes into that job. They don’t see the grind on the back side: monitoring breaking news, creating contacts, doing interviews, doing research. Romi is a grinder.”

Shortly after Channel 4 announced Bean’s promotion, she also heard from Marcia Neville and Susie Wargin, female trailblazers in Denver TV sports.

In 1983, Neville became the first female television broadcaster in Colorado when she moved from Albany, N.Y., and joined Channel 4 as a beat reporter covering high school sports. She also hosted and produced “Colorado Sportswomen,” an Emmy-award-winning quarterly women’s sports show.

“I was the first TV sports ‘gal’ here, but there has never been a main sports anchor in Denver that’s been a female,” Neville said. “There are women in so many positions in sports broadcasting now, all over television.

“But here’s the thing that I think is cool about Romi’s big promotion. She wasn’t hired because she’s a woman, and she didn’t get passed over for the job because she’s a woman. Channel 4 hired her because she’s the best person for the job. That’s the shift here and that’s what matters.”

Wargin is the sideline reporter for KOA radio’s Broncos coverage and beginning in 1998 she worked on KOA’s “Sports Zoo” with Dave Logan and Scott Hastings. Wargin became the first full-time female sports anchor at the radio station in 2000. In 2004, Wargin began working at Channel 9 as the sports anchor for the morning show.

This winter, when Wargin heard there was an opening at Channel 4, she urged Bean to pursue it.

“I saw Romi in the locker room after the Broncos-Chiefs game (on Dec. 11) when the announcement came that Michael was taking over for Jim Benemann,” Wargin recalled. “I said, ‘Are you going to go for that position?’ Romi said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ And I said, ‘Absolutely, I think you should. You have to get it, you’ve got to go for it.'”

Bean has been overwhelmed by the support from her female colleagues.

“To hear from so many other women in sports broadcasting takes it to another level,” Bean said. “You feel like, someway, somehow, you have made an impact.

“And to be mentioned along with women like Jenny, Susie and Marcia, is truly remarkable. I mean, I can’t imagine being a female sports reporter in the 80s like Marcia.”

Bean followed “a very weird path” to land her dream job.

She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa where her paternal grandfather, David Bean, a Lithuanian Jew, found refuge from the Nazis in World War II. Bean’s parents, Joe and Sandy, moved the family to Denver when she was 2.

Bean graduated from Cherry Creek High School in 2005 and earned her business degree in marketing from the University of Colorado in 2010. Her dad, a former rugby player in South Africa, became a Broncos fanatic, so Bean became one, too.

In her senior year at Cherry Creek, Bean, who has a background in dance, became a Broncos cheerleader. She performed for five seasons before moving to Los Angeles. She was a young woman still searching for her career. She tried her hand at real estate for a while before realizing, “I’m so bad at this, I’ll never sell a thing in my life.”

For four years in L.A., she worked at a rare coin company.

“I dabbled in numismatics,” she said with a grin. “Like I said, I took a very weird path.”

When she returned to Colorado in 2015, she unexpectedly earned a spot with the Broncos Cheerleaders again, never guessing it would drastically change her life.

“Nobody had ever made it back on the squad after taking five years off,” she said. “But I’m glad I did because it opened doors for me.”

Bean discovered she had a knack for public speaking and she loved talking about sports. She did an interview with KOA’s Andy Lindhal and the seed for a new career was planted.

“Andy said, ‘You are kind of a natural at this,’ ” Bean recalled. “Deep down, I always wanted to get into the business but I didn’t go to journalism school, so I thought that ship had probably sailed.”

Working with Lindhal, she started doing some faux podcasts, then became a board operator and eventually a producer for a radio sports talk show on AM 760 with former Broncos receiver Ed McCaffrey and Lindhal. Bean would pop on their air from time to time and caught the attention of Channel 4 general manager Tim Wieland, who was the news director at the time.

“Tim took a flier on me and it was an incredible leap of faith,” Bean said. “He said, ‘We’re going to take a chance on you for one year and see if we like you. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But we’ll give it a go.’ ”

It wasn’t easy to learn the ins and outs of TV — reporting, writing scripts, editing videos and becoming comfortable in front of the camera.

“It was like breathing through a fire hose,” Bean said.

She’s thankful that she had “veteran sports guys” in her corner: managing sports editor Eric Christensen, photojournalists Dave Wille and Brian Madden, senior editor Kevin Harper, and Spencer.

“Those guys have been incredible and so supportive,” Bean said. “I put my head down and worked as hard as I could. I’ve been learning ever since I’ve been on the job. Now it’s five years later and I’m still learning, but look where I am.”

Bean freely admits that it’s been difficult evolving from a fan to a TV reporter — and sometimes a critic — of Colorado teams and athletes. That’s particularly true of the Broncos.

“It’s really hard,” she said. “I was a cheerleader — literally a cheerleader, on the field — for the team. Then I was on the radio trying to give critical takes and then critical TV takes. It was doubly tough because I felt like I had to prove that I wasn’t a homer of all of these teams.”

Bean doesn’t believe her role is to constantly criticize.

“You have to find the middle ground for the fans because they don’t want to hear only, “Well, this team stinks and this player stinks.’ It’s always a challenge to find the right tone.”

Benemann, 66, has been in broadcast journalism for 45 years, almost all of it in Denver. He’s seen a lot of sports anchors come and go. He predicts that Bean will thrive.

“I’m thrilled Romi has this opportunity to make Denver TV history,” Benemann said. “She’s a delight to work with and also really knows her stuff.

“Romi and I were reporting together from the Avs Stanley Cup parade last summer with a lot of time to fill. Romi was telling viewers obscure facts about fourth-line wingers and the key draft picks and trades through the years that made the Avs champions. It drove home to me that Romi does the work to really know the local sports scene. She’ll be terrific in her new role.”

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