This Charlotte-based sportscaster’s new TV-hosting job reduced her to tears ... of joy
It’s not that Danielle Trotta has never cried while on the job.
It’s just that, in the past, the waterworks have been set off by situations she hasn’t seen coming, when something’s caused her to unexpectedly become upset or overwhelmed. And in the past, the veteran Charlotte-based NASCAR broadcaster has let them flow off-camera.
But her most recent gig, she explains, presented a new scenario, one that saw her bringing Kleenex to work fully expecting to get emotional. Only in this case, they were tears of joy.
To explain: The 41-year-old Trotta recently stepped away from the world of auto racing to host a new 10-episode unscripted series for Fox Business Network that still has something to do with autos, but nothing to do with racing. “My Dream Car!,” which premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on the cable news channel, fits loosely into the mold of “Dream Home Makeover.” The key difference is that instead of a home renovation, the project revolves around a beloved old car (often a classic one) that belongs or belonged to someone who doesn’t know their loved ones are having it restored in secret.
The main similarity? Each climactic “reveal” — the moment the unwitting family member receives their surprise gift — can tug vigorously at viewers’ heartstrings.
Or, in this case, at the host’s.
“Our first reveal,” Trotta recalls, “when she hugged her father, I said, ‘(Your daughter) is doing this for you to make up for everything you’ve done for her.’ And he just breaks down. I broke down. ... All of the episodes. I’m such a big wuss. I cry in every single one, because the reveals are so special and the families do not see it coming.”
Speaking of not seeing it coming, she never foresaw herself doing this type of work on television. At the same time, she’s gotten kind of used to noticing open doors and then striding right through them.
In a recent interview with The Charlotte Observer, Trotta took us on a guided tour of the pivotal moments in her career (and personal life), starting with her formative years and running all the way up through “My Dream Car!” and her current day job: as co-host of the SiriusXM NASCAR Radio show “On Track.”
Finding her passion early
She has a sister who is 2-1/2 years younger, but no brothers, and her dad “was really into sports. ... He just threw me into every sport that he could” — basketball, gymnastics and volleyball were her main ones — “and my mom worked weekends as a nurse, so my dad had us on weekends. And he was just like, ‘That’s how I want to spend my time as a family.’ That was our bond. So we would either be playing sports, or we’d be watching sports together at home, and I always just took to it.”
By the time she was just 8 or 9 years old, Trotta had it all figured out. “I remember I was watching with (my dad) the pregame show, ‘The NBA on NBC,’ and it was Bob Costas and Hannah Storm. They were on a two-shot (both personalities on screen), and then she turns to like a one-shot (with just Storm on the screen) to (introduce) a pre-taped piece. I was just — I don’t know, a light bulb went on. I was just like, ‘Dad, that’s what I want to do.’ ... He goes, ‘OK, go do it.’ And ... I have never, ever deviated from that goal. There was nothing else I wanted to do.”
Auto racing wasn’t a big part of her childhood. “No, that’s the crazy thing. A lot of people that cover racing grew up wanting to cover racing. (But), I mean, my dad’s from the Bronx. ... People don’t talk about NASCAR there. ... I think once we moved to Indianapolis, he was like, ‘Let’s go to the Indy 500.’ So we’d go as a family. Then we lived there in 1994 for the first Brickyard 400. Jeff Gordon won the race, and he really identified with Jeff. Jeff became his driver. So he’d bring us to some NASCAR races.”
Trotta started her college education in Boston, at Emerson College, but she says their broadcast-journalism program “was very news-oriented, and I really knew I wanted to work in sports.” So she ended it after following her parents to the Charlotte area (they’d moved in 2000 to Denver, North Carolina, from Indiana), and transferred to UNC Charlotte at age 23 in 2004. That year she also was hired to work at the Birkdale Village restaurant Dressler’s, a fact that would become a zany footnote to her love life, because ... well, we’ll get to that in a minute.
‘I truly fell in love with it’
Before finishing college in 2005, she was brought on as an intern in the sports department at WBTV. After she graduated, the station hired her full time. She initially commuted from her parents’ home in Denver but eventually moved into a Charlotte apartment with a peer at a rival station who’d become a friend: Kelli Bartik, who at the time was the sports anchor at then-Fox-affiliated WCCB. “There was never any competitive blood. We felt more like sisters — which I think is really rare for women in this business. Especially two women that are doing the exact same job. But it was never about ‘who has what.’ It was always more sharing information than competing, which was nice.”
She had always dreamed of ending up at ESPN, or with “NFL on Fox.” But in 2009, she signed with an agent who decided to send her tape (i.e. a collection of clips of her broadcasting highlights) “everywhere.” The next year, the Charlotte-based Speed cable network offered her a job. “And I thought, ‘OK, it’s a national network. It’s more money than I ever thought I’d make in my life. It’s right up the road. I don’t have to move. Let’s give it a shot.’”
Two days in, Trotta says, she was crying in the bathroom. “I thought, ‘What did I do? I made a huge mistake. I don’t know anything about NASCAR.’”
But she eventually got a grip. “‘NASCAR fans know if you get it, and they know if you don’t,’” she remembers telling herself. “‘If you don’t, you can lose credibility in a nanosecond. So get your stuff right. Pour yourself into learning this.’ That took up all of my focus. I really didn’t lift my head up for a long time. And ... I truly fell in love with it.”
Her connection to the sport also led her to her future husband (since Dressler’s could not). Speed was replaced by Fox Sports 1 in 2013, and one of the FS1 shows she worked on regularly was “NASCAR Race Hub,” often alongside Larry McReynolds. McReynolds is the one who set up Trotta on a blind date in 2014 with a NASCAR Xfinity team owner named Robby Benton, who, as it turned out, lived in an apartment at Birkdale Village when he was a driver in the mid-2000s and was at the bar in Dressler’s “all the time” — during the same period that Trotta was there. “And he doesn’t remember ever seeing me, I don’t remember ever seeing him. ’Cause I had no reason to go into the bar area. ... Had I been a bartender, maybe we would have met 10 years earlier!” They were engaged in 2016.
A detour through New England
Trotta had a variety of assignments with Speed and then Fox between 2010 and 2017, including “Race Hub” and “NASCAR Raceday;” NASCAR Xfinity Series, Supercross and MotoGP races; motor sports specials; and NFL sideline coverage.
She says she did not renew her contract with Fox in 2017 because she “was kind of becoming typecast as the NASCAR girl” and “had other itches.” She did wind up at first playing a safe bet that kept her hand in motor sports — by taking on a role at SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Then she took a significant leap: In June 2018, NBC Sports Boston hired her to co-host the regional network’s nightly studio show “Boston Sports Tonight.” Though she got her wish to be able to cover more “stick-and-ball” sports — like the NFL’s New England Patriots, MLB’s Boston Red Sox, the NBA’s Boston Celtics and the NHL’s Boston Bruins — she did have to move to Boston, and her fiancé did have to stay in Charlotte to tend to his race team. They married in October 2018, and lived apart for two years.
The pandemic brought her back to Charlotte in spring 2020, after pro sports leagues shut down and everyone on NBC Sports Boston’s staff started working remotely. “It was very difficult to cover Boston sports (while living) in Charlotte,” she says. But she only had to do it for a few months — that August, Trotta was let go by the regional sports network in a large round of COVID-related cuts. Fortunately, NASCAR had restarted by then, and Trotta was still gainfully employed by SiriusXM as co-host of the racing channel’s daily “On Track” show with her matchmaker, Larry McReynolds.
Then, in 2021, her agent pitched a fresh idea to her: a car show Fox was developing for Fox Business Network — and that was apparently looking for a female host. But it wasn’t a typical car show.
‘My Dream Car!’ ... and beyond
Trotta says she signed on to do “My Dream Car!” in large part because of its humanity. “If you love cars, we’re gonna give you that in spades. You’re gonna learn a lot about these classic cars, and the horsepower, and the customizable options. You’ll see some really iconic cars from the muscle era, which is amazing. But the 10 families that we shot with are just as much the stars of the show as the cars are. ... I think a lot of men are gonna identify with the car aspect, and a lot of the women — and I’m overgeneralizing, but — I think a lot of women will be really connected to the heart. ... You’ll really get to know the families, and go on this amazing emotional journey with them. It’s a feel-good show.” (Quick programming note: Three of the 10 families highlighted in the series are from Charlotte. One of them will be featured in Monday night’s premiere.)
It was another big leap for Trotta, going from live sports to unscripted (documentary-, or reality-style) television. It was “a totally new skill set. A muscle I had not developed. In live (TV), it’s like you give birth every day. Unscripted is the old-school, cook-it-in-the-oven-for-nine months-until-it-comes-out.”
If “My Dream Car!” gets renewed for more episodes, it sounds like she’d be happy to keep hosting. “Everyone I’m running into now has a story about somebody in their family that they love that is trying to restore this car, or has a classic car at their house. There are cars like this rotting away in garages everywhere across this country. This show could run forever. It really could.”
So what does the future hold for Trotta? She loves Charlotte, and she and her husband bought their dream home in Davidson not long ago. Her sister just moved in down the street. Her parents are still in the area, as are Benton’s. “This is home,” she says. But “this business is crazy, and you never know where it’s gonna lead. ... We don’t have children, so I think that gives us a lot of freedom and a lot of flexibility to chase opportunities as they come up.” Basically, she admits, living in two cities again is not totally out of the question.
One thing seems certain, though: She’ll always have a connection to NASCAR. “It is our life,” says Trotta, whose husband is currently in a leadership role at Rick Ware Racing. “And it’s cheesy, but ... it’s like the left turn I never saw coming. I just didn’t. I didn’t ever think that this was gonna be a part of my life. Now I don’t know what I would do without it. I would love to cover it forever.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 3:19 PM with the headline "This Charlotte-based sportscaster’s new TV-hosting job reduced her to tears ... of joy."
