Woman of the hours

Channel 7 anchor Frances Rivera is proud of her Filipino heritage and her career. She's also proud to call Boston home.

WHDH-TV evening news co-anchor Frances Rivera is greeted by Bill Taylor, general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel, during a recent lunch with friends. "I don't think there is anywhere else to go," Rivera says of her career choice and the city that has embraced her. (Globe Staff Photo / Pat Greenhouse)

The wide-eyed cooks put down their pots and pans, grab their digital cameras, and mob Frances Rivera.

"This is for my mom," one employee says as he and fellow staffers huddle around the WHDH-TV (Channel 7) news anchor for photos.

Rivera was at Church restaurant learning to prepare a braised lamb entree for her weekly cooking segment "The Dish." But she is clearly the draw here. Outside the kitchen, customers do double takes, point, and greet her. Through it all, Rivera graciously smiles and thanks them with the fondness reserved for old friends and dear neighbors.

Rivera is one of the most recognized faces in Boston, and her star has been gradually rising on not one, but two, television stations. Last year. WHDH officials named the Filipino-born Texan as the station's main co-anchor with Randy Price for the highly competitive 5, 6, and 11 p.m. newscasts. When WHDH's owner, Sunbeam Television Corp., bought WLVI-TV (Channel 56) last December, they tapped Rivera to pull double duty: She co-anchors WLVI's 10 p.m. newscast with Matt Lorch.

For Rivera, being an anchor in the country's seventh-largest TV market is a personal and professional milestone. She delivers the news with a bold yet approachable style that manifests itself in and outside the studio. Years ago, though, she didn't think TV executives would cast her for the traditional and conservative anchor role, because of her ethnic background and her sometimes over-the-top fashion sense - bright red leather skirts, zebra prints.

"To the average news viewer, I may not be as palatable as more orthodox anchors. I never thought I'd fit the mold of a main anchor," says Rivera, wearing a faux leopard-print coat, green turtleneck, jeans, and boots during a recent lunch. Other restaurant patrons take a full-visual inventory of her as if she were a model. "I take a lot of risks that break molds. Maybe somebody might call me too edgy or too unconventional of a main anchor. I think I go against the grain of what some might consider the typical primary anchor."

Her popularity as a local TV personality has made her a high-caliber celebrity, and "The Dish" illustrates that point. She ventures into a new or hip restaurant, dons an apron, and starts cooking with the chefs and signing autographs soon after. Other times, she is spotted with her tight circle of friends at some of the Boston's most happening eateries and lounges. The other day, before her 3 p.m. shift began, she stood in 29-degree weather at Quincy Market to help collect gifts for needy children. Passersby stopped and snapped photos of her.

Demographically ideal

At 37, Rivera is the youngest main female anchor in Boston. She reflects the key demographic that news stations try to court and that advertisers covet. At WHDH, her 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts ranked first among 18-49 and 25-54 viewers in the November ratings sweeps, although her newscast on WLVI hasn't had the same success yet.

Rivera is quietly proud of another feat: She is Boston's only Asian-American lead news anchor and one of the few nationwide. "Look around at any major city and most likely you won't really find an Asian primary female anchor," says Rivera, who regularly text-messages her father, a hotel manager in China, and her mother, who resides mostly in the Philippines. Rivera says she is often asked about her background because of her last name. "When people ask where are you from, I'm like, 'In what capacity?' It's never an easy question to answer."

When Rivera turned 3, her parents moved the family from the Philippines to Austin, Texas. They eventually settled in Dallas, where Rivera and her two younger brothers were reared. There, she recalls, many young women her age had big blond '80s hair and dreams of becoming a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

"My mother said, 'Uh oh, something is missing here. This is a girl who is not embracing her culture and heritage as she should.' " Rivera says. "My mother had this great idea to ship me off to the Philippines for a semester. I kicked and screamed. I hated it at first." Rivera studied at the University of the Philippines, where she learned to appreciate her Filipino culture. She became conversational in her native language. In five years there, she also traveled to Korea, Thailand, and Japan.

"It helped me mold my outlook, that there is a lot more than just being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and hanging out with your friends," she says. "It helped me grow to embrace my family, my culture, and my ethnicity more than I ever did."

Through her friends who majored in communications, Rivera discovered journalism as her calling. "You didn't have to be an expert in one particular thing. You could dabble in many things, and by the end of the day you become knowledgeable," she says. "By the end of your workday, you know enough to speak about everything. That's what lured me to it first."

Starting her career

After graduation, she headed to New York and landed a news clerical job at CBS's morning news show. "It put me in the environment where the news was being made," says Rivera, whose parents and siblings had moved to New Jersey. Rivera worked as a production assistant for CBS's political team during the 1996 presidential election. That led to her first on-air TV job, as a reporter in Wichita Falls, Texas, where she shot, edited, and reported her own stories.

Rivera's father, Atab, remembers her determination to become a journalist. He believes the secret to her success is her sincerity. "What you see with her and when you see her on TV, the way she is, is the way she is in person," he says. "She is a very gracious person - and when I say gracious, she treats people with a lot of kindness and a lot of courtesy."

In 1999, Rivera worked at KWTV in Oklahoma City as a reporter and fill-in anchor but never made main anchor. "Time after time, they always chose someone else," she says. "It was frustrating. I was always the stand-by fill-in person until the very last minute."

In 2001, WHDH called her to interview for a reporter/weekend anchor job. She took it. Three months later, Rivera was promoted to the morning show. As her career ambitions blossomed in Boston, so did her personal life. In 2003, she married Stuart Fraass, a mortgage broker.

"We decided to get married here because this is where we wanted to be," she says. "To be in this city, which is gorgeously picturesque and where there is history, it was like, 'Ah, I am ready for this to be home.' "

By 2006, Rivera was promoted to the early evening news as the No. 2 co-anchor. When Caterina Bandini announced she was pregnant with twins and not returning to the anchor chair, WHDH began a search for a replacement. Rivera got the job. The WHDH newsroom cheered when the announcement was made.

"When you have someone who is very quiet, beautiful, and beyond stylish, you wonder what are they really about?" says Price. "You will be pleasantly surprised that she is so down to earth, real, warm, and engaging. She has an enormous workload, and she's always on, she is always prepared."

Rivera works 3 p.m. to midnight weekdays, which gives her eight nights a month off. In her downtime she enjoys arranging flowers in her Charlestown condo or shopping for clothes online. (She has five closets.)

After years of shuffling around the country, she says Boston is her home.

"I don't think there is anywhere else to go," she says. "Throughout my career, I always had that itch: What's next? In the position I am in, that itch has stopped. And if this is it, I will be more than thrilled that I reached this point."

Johnny Diaz can be reached at jodiaz@globe.com.