Marlee Glinter, an Emmy-winning journalist with CBS Sacramento, just pulled back the curtain on something that’s been quietly shaping her entire life — and it’s not something you’d ever notice by watching her anchor the news. Behind the poised delivery, the crisp storytelling, and the confident presence on-screen, Glinter has been living with significant hearing loss since childhood.
And she’s finally talking about it.
In a personal revelation that’s resonating with a lot more people than you might expect, Glinter explained that she’s been battling the effects of repeated ear infections since she was a kid. For years, she brushed off missed punchlines and misheard conversations, often laughing at the wrong time or pretending she caught what someone said. Like so many others, she didn’t want to seem rude or slow, or worse — broken. She wasn’t. She just couldn’t hear.
That’s not rare, by the way. The Mayo Clinic notes that repeated ear infections, especially when left untreated or mismanaged in childhood, can lead to chronic hearing loss. Some people are genetically predisposed to this due to the anatomy of their Eustachian tubes — those narrow passages that help drain fluid from the middle ear. If that fluid sticks around too long, infections can follow, and over time, the damage builds.
In Marlee’s case, the damage was significant — but so was her ability to adapt. Newsrooms aren’t exactly libraries. They’re loud, fast-moving, crowded spaces where information flies in a hundred directions all at once. Trying to operate in that environment with compromised hearing? That’s like running a marathon in flip-flops.
Eventually, she reached a breaking point and decided to seek help. That led her to Dr. Tanner Mackey, an audiologist in Elk Grove, who diagnosed a substantial hearing loss that had gone unnoticed by even the sharpest observers. To the outside world, she looked and sounded perfectly fine. But the tests told a different story.
Now, Glinter wears hearing aids. And here’s the part that may surprise people who still think of hearing aids as big, clunky devices reserved for grandparents and sitcom punchlines — they’ve changed. A lot. Glinter’s are sleek, hair-colored, tucked neatly behind her ear, and basically invisible unless you know exactly what to look for. They even connect to her phone through an app, letting her customize settings depending on where she is — a quiet room, a packed restaurant, or a chaotic newsroom.
And she’s not just adjusting. She’s thriving.
She shared her story not to get sympathy, but to break down the shame and stigma that still surrounds hearing loss and treatment. Because here’s the thing: according to national estimates, millions of Americans could benefit from hearing aids, but the vast majority never try them. Either they’re in denial, or they’re embarrassed, or they don’t know how far the technology has come.
Marlee Glinter is proof that hearing loss doesn’t have to hold you back — but ignoring it might. Her message was simple, honest, and kind of overdue: don’t wait. Don’t fake your way through conversations. Don’t miss another joke, another whisper, another “I love you” in a crowded room. Help is out there, and it might be smaller, smarter, and more life-changing than you ever imagined.
