He doesn’t look it. He looks like he could still get carded. He has all his hair. White teeth. Year-round tan. He still wears shorts to the office. But even the ageless age, and that includes Wesley Ruff, everybody’s kid brother, the most upbeat, enthusiastic person who ever invaded your TV set, and who by now, believe it or not, has been around long enough to qualify to talk about the good old days.
He’s taking us back to Bismarck, North Dakota, where in 1982 he landed his first sportscasting job at KFYR-TV. He started in December.
“It was butt-freezing cold,” he remembers. “We once went 60 straight days where it never got above zero — not above freezing, above zero. One Christmas Eve, it was 85 degrees below with the wind chill. And there was nothing to cover, no big colleges, no pros. We’re covering things like girls high school JV volleyball, not that that’s bad, and I was working six nights a week and making $1,050 a month, that was what they started me at, and the money never lasted. And I would drive home at night after the 10 o’clock show, freezing, and go, THIS IS AWESOME! THEY’RE PAYING ME TO DO THIS! THIS IS SO COOL!”
And that was before the ABC affiliate KTVX — Channel 4, to the locals — recruited him to bring all that energy to Salt Lake City three years later. At 27, Wes had his dream job.
“I got to come home,” says Wes, who grew up in Springville. “I’ve never wanted to leave.”
All of this is relevant nostalgia, because last week, Wes announced he’s retiring. His last show will be Sunday, June 21. After at least 11,000 nightly broadcasts — 22,000, if you count the early and late reports — he’s bidding adieu to a career that has spanned 44 years, the last 41 at Channel 4.
In TV news, that qualifies as an eternity. The only anchor in the Utah market who has lasted longer is the legendary Dick Nourse, who did the nightly news at KSL for 43 years.
Year in, year out, dating back to when Ronald Reagan was president and Karl Malone joined the Jazz, Wes has been a fixture in Utah homes, delivering the sports with his infectious good humor.
The fact that you could do this and get paid never ceased to amaze him.
It all circles back to the epiphany he had when he was at BYU, majoring in international relations — under the mistaken impression that it had something to do with public relations, which it didn’t.
Looking for a change of majors, he was watching sportscaster Bill Marcroft on KUTV one evening, “and it dawned on me that that’s his job. I’d grown up thinking people on TV had real jobs during the day and then would go in at night and do that for fun — because I would have done it for fun.
“So then I think, wait, if that’s his job, I wonder if you can major in that? So I looked in the college curriculum. I first looked under sportscasting and there was nothing. Then I checked broadcasting and I saw that there was a broadcast major. So I went down and changed my major the next day.”
Very little has happened in Utah sports that Wes — wearing his trademark shorts and gym shoes out of sight behind the set — hasn’t reported on, if not seen personally. From John Stockton making the shot that sent the Jazz to the NBA Finals 29 years ago to the Utah Mammoth making the NHL playoffs two months ago (that was Wes wearing a Mammoth jersey interviewing the fans). And everything before, after and in between.
And it’s safe to say no one in local TV has covered golf like Wes Ruff has covered golf.
He started playing the game with his dad and brother when he was 10 and he’s been hooked ever since. The love affair heightened when he graduated from Springville High School — where he was captain of the golf and basketball teams — and the Utah Golf Association surprised him with a $600 scholarship. The money helped him go to college. He’d never forget the kindness.
Not only has he given golf more than its fair share of primetime TV coverage, he’s also emceed more Utah Golf Association events than he can count. All for free. And for 19 years, he hosted Beat the Pro, a made-for-TV show of his own invention that raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
“It’s awesome that Wesley has remained true to his desire to give back to the game. I mean, that scholarship was a long time ago,” says his friend Randy Dodson, publisher of the UGA-affiliated Fairways Magazine, “but he’s never stopped doing whatever he can.”
What he’s done and what he’s accomplished hasn’t changed him, adds Dodson, “I know him as a friend I play golf with and the guy who’s been on TV for 41 years, and he’s the same guy. That personality travels.”
The UGA, in response, honored Wes in 2022 with its Gold Club Award for his lifelong devotion to Utah golf, a recognition that came after he was named Utah PGA Golf Citizen of the Year no less than three times, in 2000, 2006 and 2017. After the third one, they renamed it the Wesley Ruff Citizen of the Year Award. In 2024, the Utah Sports Hall of Fame honored Wes for distinguished service. He’s been voted Utah Sportscaster of the Year five times by his peers.
If that’s not enough of a wrap for a career, there’s this observation from Wes:
“Recently I was sitting on the desk during a commercial and I look at the male anchor, the female anchor, and the weather person, and I think to myself that I have been here longer in years than they have been here in months — put together.”
It was another epiphany. It’s time to quit his night job.
“I love it and I’m going to really miss it,” he says. “But I’m 68-and-a-half. It’s time. And there’s a lot of golf to be played.”