Made In Chicago: Margie Korshak Public Relations
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For 45 years, the name Margie Korshak has been linked to many of Chicago's biggest events.
WBBM Newsradio's Regine Schlesinger reports, when Korshak was just a young housewife out in the park with her two small children, she began feeling restless.
"I was sitting on that bench and I thought to myself 'This is so boring. There's got to be more to life,'" Korshak said.
She had no idea what to do until she spent a few hours talking to the late business tycoon Bill Wirtz.
"He looked at me and said, 'Margie, you have the greatest gift of gab.' He said, 'I think you'd be great in P.R.,'" Korshak said.
Initially she went to work doing public relations for the Furniture Mart, then got an offer to join a major public relations firm.
"I was 29-years-old. I said, 'No, that's not what I'm going to do. I want to make it on my own. I don't want to be part of somebody else. I want to be Margie Korshak,'" she said.
So in 1969, she founded Margie Korshak Inc., and quickly began attracting clients.
"The biggest break I had when Mill Run Theater opened in Niles and we had all the big stars," Korshak said. "I remember Michael Jackson when he was 5 years old. He came there. Woody Allen came there. Shecky Greene came there."
She's represented every Broadway show to come to Chicago and has had countless other accounts. At 74, she's just signed a new 3-year lease on her office at the Hancock Center.
"I'm never going to quit. I'm going to do it as long as I can get to the office at 8 o'clock in the morning. What else would I do? I've worked my whole adult life," Korshak said. "I don't play bridge, I don't play tennis, I don't play golf. I go to work and I love it."
Margie Korshak, still going strong after 45 years as Chicago's top public relations specialist.
