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Ellina Abovian, a popular Emmy Award-nominated journalist who was fired by KTLA on her 40th birthday, shared details of her exit interview on the latest episode of her Breaking Though podcast entitled 'My KTLA Layoff.'
“I’m sitting there and I’m just cocooned in myself because I’m waiting to hear what they’re going to say,” Abovian said. “As the words are coming out, I’m in shock, I’m in disbelief. I’m just like, no, this can’t be it.”
Abovian, 40, a single mom who has been divorced since 2024, then revealed the one thing her boss told her after her firing.
“I really just said one thing in that meeting,” she said. “I looked to my superiors and I said, ‘Out of everyone here, you choose a single mom with two kids.’ And I’m not discrediting anyone else’s struggle in life."
Abovian was among the on-air talent, along with anchor Mark Kriski, meteorologist Kacey Montoya and veteran midday anchors Glen Walker and Lu Parker, laid off by KTLA amid restructuring plans on February 24. The veteran reporter, who had contributed to the news station for more than a decade, received several happy birthday wishes on her social media accounts on the day the firing occurred and appeared to send a thinly-veiled shot a message to her former employers.
“Stop hiding. Stop shrinking. There’s a big world out there and you can be a part of it. You don’t have to only exist within your Armenian community," Abovian said on an earlier episode of her podcast. “Stop hiding your body, stop thinking you’re not good enough. You are so perfect in all your imperfections. If I could say that to my 21-year-old self and just say go for it. What are you waiting for."
“I wish my 21-year-old self could have followed all her dreams. I wish she could have gone out there into the world… and experienced more things instead of looking for safety," she added. “But it’s easier said than done now being 40. So I’m going to tell myself that now as if you know it’s the 20-year-old in me and do the best with what I have in front of me today.
“We don’t get do overs in life but we do get to be who we are right now and to be 40 to feel great in my own skin, to have come this far… great, let’s move through the world now with that certainty and stop trying to go back to 20 or 30."
“Those chapters are finished and I’m happy that they’re finished because it led me here.” she added in a post shared on her Instagram account: “I guess this is 40. Feeling lighter, loved and looking forward.”