How John McGivern Went From Seminary to Rehab to Local TV Icon

John McGivern, now a beloved Milwaukee TV host known for his wholesome public television shows, was a struggling actor battling cocaine and alcohol addiction in 1990. His family staged an intervention, forcing him to choose between rehab or losing them, which became the turning point that led to his recovery and eventual career as a local icon.

John McGivern was pissed off. It was Jan. 5, 1990, and he’d just been “kidnapped.” The 35-year-old actor had been on top of the world just weeks before. After years of on-and-off work, he’d landed a small part in Shear Madness, then the longest-running theater show in Chicago, and was soon promoted to the lead role. The show was going great – the character of a flamboyant hairdresser gave McGivern the chance to play up his comedic chops for sold-out audiences. Then one afternoon, two of his brothers, Jim and Mike, drove down from Milwaukee. They wanted to grab a beer before McGivern’s show. With a few hours to spare, he got in the back of their car. He noticed that they were driving kind of far, past plenty of perfectly good bars. Why were they getting on the highway? That’s when his brothers announced that they were taking him back home for an intervention. It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year What had begun as casual pot smoking had spiraled over the past decade. McGivern now admits that he was a “mess.” His heavy drinking and cocaine use was sabotaging his performances and ruining his relationships. He kept his addiction as hidden as he could from his family, but when he hadn’t bothered showing up for Thanksgiving or Christmas, his loved ones knew he was in trouble. When they arrived in Milwaukee, the brothers dragged McGivern back in time 25 years. He found himself standing in the entrance to the small duplex on Bartlett Avenue where he’d grown up, surrounded by his family. There was his mother. His two sisters. His 93-year-old grandmother. His third brother, Tim, a therapist who’d flown out from Florida and had organized this entire thing. One by one, every member of McGivern’s family read him a letter. When he remembers those letters now, he still chokes up. They were worried about him. They were angry with him. They loved him. There was even a letter from the producer of Shear Madness, who was at that moment about to stage the show without McGivern. The producer had worked with the family to organize the intervention; the letter told McGivern that he was out of the show – but if he got clean and sober, he was welcome back. John’s grandmother was the last to read her letter. “I’m not a rich woman – my grandchildren are my jewels,” she wrote. “It’s up to you, if you will get treatment. But if you decide not to, I won’t see you again, and I will lose my jewel.” After they’d all said their piece, his family said they were going to bring him to DePaul Hospital on Milwaukee’s South Side. “If you don’t want to spend 30 days there, you can leave right now,” they said. “But you won’t see us again.” If you’re a fan of John McGivern, this story might be something of a shock. Now 71, McGivern is a certified Milwaukee celebrity – and a wholesome one, at that. Since 2012, he’s been the affable cornerstone of public television, known for his tours of Wisconsin’s cities, towns and neighborhoods on “Around the Corner with John McGivern” and “John McGivern’s Main Streets.” His screen presence is all cheer, quick wit and earnest Midwestern appreciation for small towns and local flavor. You don’t expect that carefree grin from an addict whose family was threatening to cut him off. But that moment and the choice his family forced on him is critical to understanding who McGivern became. It’s the turning point that transformed a struggling actor searching for opportunities and squandering potential into the cheerful, enthusiastic, friendly figure who has shown off our state on television for the past 14 years – a run that hits a milestone this month with the final full-length episode of “Main Streets.” His story begins three decades earlier in the exact same place, with the exact same people: the McGivern family packed inside that East Side duplex. JOHN MCIVERN WAS THE ODD KID OUT. His three brothers were all the “jockiest, sportiest boys in the world,” and he “couldn’t throw a ball,” he says. In an Irish Catholic family of eight, that meant the McGiverns thought they had a future priest on their hands. “We would play church,” remembers his younger sister, Colleen Ashenden. “He was of course the priest. … We would make-believe Holy Communion with little candy discs.” While McGivern’s brothers were competing on football fields and baseball diamonds, his mother would take him and Colleen to see musicals at The Melody Top, a seasonal tent venue on Good Hope Road that ran shows like West Side Story and The Music Man. “I remember the grease paint, the crowd, and I was just sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is so much better than baseball,’” McGivern recalls. When he was 13, his parents suggested sending him to St. Lawrence Seminary in Mount Calvary for high school, and McGivern – who shared a bedroom with all three brothers and a bathroom with the entire family – jumped at the chance to leave home. At St. Lawrence, he was drawn to debate, public speaking and theater, performing in the school’s production of My Fair Lady. The young man had a strong faith and believed he might have a vocation to the priesthood. But the seminary, he eventually learned, wasn’t quite the correct fit for him. Junior year, he was thrown out for what he now describes as “a lot of stuff,” including “homosexual activity.” The last straw, he says, was a class skit he wrote and directed that mercilessly lampooned the Franciscan priests who taught them. He had the best mimics in class doing impressions of their teachers and a student spoofing Jesus Himself. “The kids loved it,” McGivern remembers. “The priests were pissed.” At 16, McGivern’s sexuality was difficult for him to ignore, but he still thought he might be able to remain celibate and eventually become a priest. After finishing his last year of high school back in Milwaukee, he did a year of college at UW-Oshkosh, where he first smoked marijuana. In search of direction, he returned to the church, this time joining a Franciscan formation house for future priests in Milwaukee. He stuck it out for years, but at the same time, he was nurturing a growing interest in theater. He was also growing disenchanted with many of the church’s teachings and more accepting of his sexuality. He eventually came out to his family over several conversations as a young man in the mid-’70s, although he says it wasn’t exactly a revelation to them. “They knew before I did. … There’s never been any shaming or anything like that with them. My mother was like, ‘Oh, I just wish this didn’t have to be.’ She just thought it’d be real hard for me.” Ashenden remembers the phone call when her brother told her. “He said it, and I was like … so? Of course I know you’re gay.” His family’s reaction was a relief, but it cast his own struggles with his sexuality into a sharper light. “There are still moments of shame around it, to be honest. … The fact that I was joyous over my family’s acceptance speaks to my sort of not accepting.” When he left the seminary at 24, his hope was to become an acting teacher. He moved to Tampa, Florida, where his brother Tim lived, and tried his hand at it, eventually landing an internship at The Academy Theatre in Atlanta. That sparked a few more opportunities, and instead of making a living teaching, he thought he might have a chance to survive on acting alone. “It was many years of waiting for somebody to hire me,” he says. Still, he strung together enough theater jobs to keep going. “He was making it, but barely,” Ashenden says. “It wasn’t glamorous, but he always seemed to manage, and he was happy.” But his sister had no idea that McGivern – bouncing from stage to stage – was drinking more heavily than ever before. He returned to the Midwest in 1985, moving to Chicago. “I remember my mother said to me, ‘You’re smoking marijuana. You know that leads to other drugs,’” he says. “Little did she know that I had already started other drugs.” WHEN I ASKED MCGIVERN if it was difficult coming out as gay to his family, he appeared to choke back tears. “They still don’t know,” he said – before bursting into laughter and actually answering the question. That moment during our interview was characteristic of what it’s like to talk with McGivern. He has an undeniable gift for disarming people with humor and a comfortably familiar way of speaking with a stranger like they’ve known each other for years. He’s a witty storyteller – the kind of performer who can sustain a one-man show for two hours – but he’s also a natural conversationalist, quick with questions and quicker with jokes. He’s used that ingratiating ability for over a decade to great success on “Around the Corner,” which ran from 2012-20, and “Main Streets,” which wraps its broadcast series this month after four years. “People tell him things that they should not tell him, like right out of the gate,” says Lois Maurer, his longtime producer. “It’s because when people meet John, they automatically think he’s their best friend.” Ashenden recalls trying to walk through the State Fair with her brother during the run of “Around the Corner” and getting sucked into a relentless tornado of conversations. “Folks recognize him all the time. He never, ever doesn’t stop to chat with people,” she says. “I assume that he knows these people. Then we walk away, and I’m like “Who was that?” He’s like, ‘I don’t know.’” McGivern’s family and friends say he always had that skill, but what McGivern says he lacked for many years was the focus and reliability to consistently use it to build a career – all the way until his brothers kidnapped him. AT HIS WORST, MCGIVERN WAS spending $600 a week on cocaine. “It was as much money as I could get ahold of,” he says. He had that money after landing the lead role in Shear Madness, a gig that meant both recognition and a reliable paycheck. But the drugs were putting that paycheck in jeopardy. His producer told him, “You were so inconsistent. There were moments of brilliance and moments of just, ‘What the hell is he doing?’” McGivern remembers. After his family delivered their ultimatum, he agreed to check in to the hospital. After 30 days getting sober, he spent six months in outpatient treatment, moving back into his childhood bedroom. He got a job waiting tables at the Milwaukee Rep’s Stackner Cabaret. “Six months before I was a waiter, I had the starring role in the longest-running show in Chicago. It was humbling.” Newly sober, McGivern returned to the producer of Shear Madness, who kept his promise and gave him back his lead role. “Those first few years, my sobriety was based on what my family wanted. I didn’t want them to disown me,” McGivern says. “It took me a while to come to terms with knowing I really should do it for myself. … By the grace of God, I’ve never relapsed.” While McGivern was doing Shear Madness, the director approached him with the idea of “telling the stories that you’ve been telling backstage onstage.” That sparked a new idea: a one-man show of McGivern talking about growing up on the East Side of Milwaukee. The act, eventually titled Mid-West Side Story, found a venue in Chicago, and the second weekend he performed it, a producer from Comedy Central was in the audience. The network hired McGivern to do a stand-up set for “Out There 2,” a 1994 comedy special featuring gay performers shot in New York. Half a country away, Dave Luczak happened to be sitting on the couch when the special aired. When the host introduced McGivern as “from Milwaukee,” the WKLH morning radio show host perked up. He got in touch with McGivern and invited him onto the program. “I remember some listeners felt a little uncomfortable, let’s say, about John because it wasn’t really common back in 1994 to have an openly gay man,” Luczak says. “I remember being very happy that we invited him in – and just how incredibly funny he was. I thought, ‘We have to get this guy back on as often as possible.’” That’s what Luczak did, having McGivern call in regularly. McGivern’s new a