If you grew up watching Houston television any time between the mid-1970s and 2015, the name Don Nelson probably brings back a specific feeling before it brings back a specific fact. Maybe it’s the sound of morning traffic reports before school. Maybe it’s a fuzzy memory of a talk show couch on “Good Morning Houston.” Maybe it’s the image of a grown man shaving his head on live television because his beloved Houston Rockets won a championship.
That’s the thing about Don Nelson. He wasn’t a national name. He was a Houston name — one that an entire generation of viewers associates with mornings, laughter, and a city figuring out its own identity on local TV. This article pulls together everything publicly known about Don Nelson of Houston: how he got there, what he did for nearly four decades at KTRK-TV (ABC13), and what happened after he signed off for the last time.
One quick note before we go further: there is also a Don Nelson who became famous nationally as an NBA head coach and Hall of Famer. That is a different person entirely, and we’ll clear up the confusion later in this article so you land on the right information for your search.
Quick Answer
Don Nelson is a longtime Houston television personality best known for his nearly 40-year career at KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate known locally as ABC13. He joined the station in 1975 and became one of the most recognizable faces in Houston morning television, co-hosting the long-running talk show “Good Morning Houston,” hosting “Dialing for Dollars,” and later delivering morning traffic reports on “Eyewitness News This Morning.” He retired on February 27, 2015, after 39 years and four months at the station, and Houston’s mayor at the time officially declared that day “Don Nelson Day.”
That’s the short version. The longer story is more interesting, and it says a lot about what local television used to be — and what it meant to a city like Houston before cable news and streaming fragmented everyone’s attention.
Early Life: From Pittsburgh to the Air Force
Don Nelson was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Public information about his early personal life is limited — there’s no widely published record of his exact birth date, his family background, or his education before adulthood. What is documented is that he served four years in the United States Air Force before beginning his broadcasting career.
That military background is worth noting because it shaped the next stretch of his life. Rather than heading straight into television, Nelson started at the ground level of American media: small-market radio.
Breaking Into Broadcasting
After the Air Force, Nelson’s broadcasting career began at a radio station in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. From there, he moved through a series of radio jobs that were fairly typical for broadcasters building a career in the 1960s and 1970s — first to Wheeling, West Virginia, then to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
It was in Albuquerque that his path shifted from radio to television. A local TV station offered him a job doing weekend weather and hosting “Dialing for Dollars,” a call-in giveaway format that was common on local stations at the time. Nelson has described putting on a sport coat and tie and stepping in front of the camera for the first time as effectively becoming “Mr. Fortune” — the on-air persona tied to that show format.
This detail matters because it explains why Nelson’s Houston career would later include so much variety. He didn’t come up as a straight news anchor. He came up doing weather, game-show-style hosting, and whatever else a small station needed, which built the versatility that would define his entire career.
How Don Nelson Ended Up in Houston
Nelson’s move to Houston happened almost by chance. Marvin Zindler — himself a well-known and colorful Houston TV consumer reporter — happened to see Nelson on television while visiting New Mexico. Zindler encouraged him to apply at Channel 13 in Houston.
Nelson sent in an audition tape of himself doing the weather in costume, which was enough to get him hired. It’s a small anecdote, but it says something about local television in that era: hiring decisions could hinge on a single tape, a single recommendation, and a willingness to do something a little unconventional on camera.
Joining KTRK-TV (ABC13) in 1975
Don Nelson officially joined KTRK-TV in 1975, arriving several years after Dave Ward — the station’s legendary evening anchor — had already become a fixture on Houston screens. KTRK-TV had been broadcasting in Houston since 1954 and had built its identity around the “Eyewitness News” brand starting in 1969.
Nelson’s arrival in 1975 placed him at a station that was already investing heavily in personality-driven local programming, and over the following four decades he would become one of the most versatile on-air talents in the station’s history. Former colleagues have described him using words like “icon,” “legend,” and “star,” and one former co-host said she always believed he had the talent to succeed on a national stage. Instead, he built his entire career around one city.
“Good Morning Houston” and the Jan Glenn Years
The role most associated with Don Nelson’s Houston career is his time co-hosting “Good Morning Houston” alongside Jan Glenn from 1977 to 1991. The show ran for roughly 14 years and became one of the signature local talk programs in Houston television history, featuring a steady lineup of celebrity guests, local personalities, and entertainment segments.
The on-air chemistry between Nelson and Glenn reportedly wasn’t an immediate, easy fit. Both wanted the show named after themselves early on — Glenn wanted it billed as her show, and Nelson pushed for “The Don Nelson Show” — which led to years of good-natured on-air bickering that became part of the show’s charm. That built-in tension, playful rather than hostile, is part of what made the format work for over a decade.
Guests on the “Good Morning Houston” couch reportedly included a long list of touring celebrities and entertainment figures passing through Houston, making the show a local stop on the national media circuit for many years.
Dialing for Dollars and Morning Traffic
Before and alongside “Good Morning Houston,” Nelson also hosted “Dialing for Dollars,” the same call-in giveaway format he had done earlier in his career in Albuquerque. It was a natural extension of the persona he had already built before arriving in Texas.
In the later stretch of his career, after “Good Morning Houston” ended its run, Nelson shifted into delivering morning traffic reports as part of “Eyewitness News This Morning.” This was a notably different role from talk-show hosting — more service-oriented, more repetitive by nature — but it kept him a daily presence in Houston households for years after his talk-show era ended. He’s described the unglamorous side of that job directly: getting up in the middle of the night, night after night, for decades, is not what people imagine when they picture local television.
Hosting Houston’s Biggest Events
Beyond his regular on-air roles, Don Nelson became the go-to host for many of ABC13’s biggest annual events and specials. These reportedly included:
- Share Your Holidays, a charitable holiday programming event
- The Rodeo Parade, tied to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
- The Power of Houston, a station special
- The International Festival, which reportedly took him around the world, including experiences like riding elephants and sampling unfamiliar foods for segments
This kind of event hosting was common for well-liked local personalities in that era of television, and it reflects how central Nelson had become to ABC13’s identity beyond his regular daily programming.
The Rockets Head-Shave and Other Signature Moments
Houston sports fans of a certain age may remember Don Nelson for a moment that had nothing to do with news or weather: he famously promised to shave his head if the Houston Rockets won an NBA championship. When the Rockets did win in the 1990s, Nelson followed through on live television — a moment colleagues have pointed to as one of his most memorable on-air stunts.
His changing hairstyles over the decades — reportedly moving from a Beatles-style cut to a pompadour to curly hair before eventually going bald — became something of a running visual joke among longtime viewers, illustrating just how long he’d been a fixture on Houston screens.
He also tried his hand at team roping at one point, an attempt that reportedly did not go well. Cowboy actor Ben Johnson is said to have told him he had never seen anyone do so many things wrong at once during a single attempt. Nelson himself seemed to embrace these moments rather than avoid them, which was arguably part of his appeal: he was willing to be the punchline as often as he was the host.
The Cookbook Collector
One of the more distinctive facts about Don Nelson is his cookbook collection, built up through years of cooking segments with visiting chefs. By his own account, he had accumulated close to 640 cookbooks after 17 years of doing these segments — enough, he joked, to serve as insulation in his attic.
It’s a small detail, but it underscores something about his career: Nelson wasn’t just reading a teleprompter. He was actively involved in the kinds of lifestyle and cooking segments that made local morning television feel personal and community-oriented, long before that kind of content moved primarily to cable and streaming platforms.
Retirement in 2015 and “Don Nelson Day”
Don Nelson announced his retirement from ABC13 in early 2015, with his final on-air day set for Friday, February 27, 2015 — marking 39 years and four months with the station. Houston’s mayor at the time, Annise Parker, officially proclaimed February 27 as “Don Nelson Day” in the city, a formal recognition of his decades of service to Houston’s media landscape.
Colleagues offered warm tributes as he signed off. One longtime co-anchor described the privilege of working alongside him for 27 years, calling him one of the kindest, most generous, and funniest people he’d known, while noting that Nelson’s quick wit kept everyone on their toes in the newsroom. Station leadership at the time credited him with doing “all of it” over nearly four decades — hosting, traffic reporting, interviewing — and doing it with hard work and genuine passion.
By his own account, what he said he would miss most after retiring was the people he worked with and the adrenaline of live television. But he also described retiring with a sense that he had accomplished his real goal all along: being the same person on camera that he was off camera.
Life After ABC13
Don Nelson didn’t fully disappear from Houston media after his 2015 retirement. He made a return appearance on Houston radio station 104.1 KRBE’s “Roula & Ryan Show,” sharing stories from his four-decade television career with listeners.
In 2022, he appeared as a guest on “Dave Ward & Friends,” a podcast hosted by his former KTRK colleague, longtime anchor Dave Ward. Across two episodes, Nelson and Ward — who together represented close to a century of combined on-air experience in Houston — revisited stories about how Nelson came to Houston, his years on the morning show, and behind-the-scenes moments from their careers, including his marriage. That podcast appearance remains one of the most recent publicly available records of Nelson discussing his career and life after television. Dave Ward himself passed away in December 2025.
Beyond that podcast appearance, there is no widely published, verifiable update on Don Nelson’s current activities. If you’re searching for the very latest news about him, a search directly through Houston outlets like ABC13 (abc13.com) or the Houston Chronicle will surface anything more recent than what’s covered here.
Don Nelson vs. Don Nelson the NBA Coach
Because “Don Nelson” is a fairly common name, it’s worth being clear about who’s who. There is a separate, far more nationally famous Don Nelson: a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame NBA head coach who spent nearly 50 years in professional basketball as a player and coach, most notably with the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, and Dallas Mavericks. He is remembered as the second-winningest head coach in NBA history and a five-time NBA champion as a player.
That NBA coach Don Nelson has no direct professional connection to Houston television — his coaching career centered on other franchises entirely. If your search intent was about basketball rather than local TV, you’re looking for a different person, and general sports news and NBA history sources are the right place to find accurate information about him.
There are also other private individuals named Don Nelson who have lived in the Houston area, unrelated to either public figure described above. This article focuses specifically on the Don Nelson best known as a Houston broadcaster, since that’s the person most searches for “Don Nelson Houston” are typically looking for.
Why Don Nelson Still Matters to Houston Media History
It’s easy to underestimate how significant a role like Nelson’s was in a city the size of Houston. Local morning television in the 1970s through the 1990s wasn’t just a news delivery system — it was often the connective tissue for a metro area, the thing families experienced together before heading out the door for school and work.
Nelson’s nearly 40-year run at one station, across multiple formats and roles, is genuinely unusual by modern media standards, where on-air talent frequently moves between markets or leaves broadcasting for digital platforms within a few years. His career reflects an older model of local television: build trust with one audience, stay long enough to become part of its routine, and adapt your role as the format around you changes.
That’s also why searches for “Don Nelson Houston” tend to come from people trying to reconnect with a specific memory — a childhood morning routine, a parent who watched him religiously, or curiosity sparked by an old photo or video clip. The value in a name like his isn’t really about news headlines. It’s about the texture of everyday life in Houston across multiple decades.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Don Nelson still on TV in Houston?
No. Don Nelson retired from KTRK-TV (ABC13) on February 27, 2015, after nearly 40 years with the station. He has made occasional public and radio appearances since then, but he is not a regular presence on Houston television anymore.
What was Don Nelson best known for on ABC13?
He’s best remembered for co-hosting “Good Morning Houston” with Jan Glenn from 1977 to 1991, as well as hosting “Dialing for Dollars” and later delivering morning traffic reports on “Eyewitness News This Morning.”
Is Don Nelson from Houston the same person as the NBA coach Don Nelson?
No. They are two different people who happen to share the same name. The Houston broadcaster spent his career at KTRK-TV, while the other Don Nelson was a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame NBA head coach connected to teams including the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, and Dallas Mavericks.
How long did Don Nelson work at ABC13?
He worked at KTRK-TV for 39 years and 4 months, joining in 1975 and retiring on February 27, 2015.
Did the city of Houston officially honor Don Nelson?
Yes. Then-Houston Mayor Annise Parker proclaimed February 27, 2015 — his final on-air day — as “Don Nelson Day” in the city.
Where can I watch old clips of Don Nelson on Good Morning Houston or ABC13?
ABC13’s own website (abc13.com) has published retrospective articles and video clips covering his career and retirement. Searching Houston media archives or ABC13’s own site directly is the most reliable way to find original footage.
Conclusion
Don Nelson’s story is, in many ways, the story of local Houston television itself during its most personality-driven era. He arrived in 1975 on the strength of a single audition tape, spent nearly four decades building a career that touched everything from talk shows to traffic reports to charity events, and left in 2015 with a city-proclaimed day named in his honor. Along the way, he became known just as much for shaving his head over a Rockets championship and collecting hundreds of cookbooks as he did for any single broadcast.
If you came here trying to place a name from your own memories of Houston mornings, that’s almost certainly the Don Nelson you were thinking of — not the NBA Hall of Fame coach who happens to share his name. And if his story reminds you of a specific segment, interview, or moment from ABC13’s archives, that’s exactly the kind of local media history worth tracking down directly through Houston’s own news outlets.
