NEW YORK, NY.- It’s a voice unmistakable to millions of harried New York City subway riders, telling them to “please stand away from the platform edge” or that the next train is “approaching the station.”
It is deep and sounds authoritative, even comforting. But behind those disembodied familiar reminders was a secret. Bernie Wagenblast, the voice actor and traffic reporter who found success as one of the most recognizable voices of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, knew that despite living as a man for most of her life, she was a transgender woman. And at 65, she wanted to live as one.
She had kept the secret for six decades because she was paralyzed by what the truth might bring: “Would this make me a laughingstock? Would this make me a source of pity? Would this endanger my safety?” A marriage and a family had been built on a promise that no one would utter that secret.
Wagenblast, who is from Cranford, New Jersey, came out as a woman publicly a little over a year ago. Because New Yorkers and tourists know her voice from the subways, her story has captured media attention as far away as the Netherlands, Japan and Kazakhstan.
Her broadcast voice was crafted to be masculine. It is a relic of a past life, but it has provided for her family and connected her to a large audience. Wagenblast, who is now 67, still uses it for gigs and said it defines a part of her.
At the same time, she is mastering a different way of speaking. Her new voice, soft and lilting, is an expression of her true self, she said.
Wagenblast is undergoing her transition during a fraught time for people who do not conform to traditional gender identities. Conservative lawmakers across the United States have passed measures curbing medical treatment for gender transitions, and requiring transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms associated with their sex assigned at birth.
Some of Wagenblast’s worst fears have materialized. Strangers have mocked her appearance. Clients and acquaintances have slipped away. Her marriage has fallen apart.
Wagenblast, who now wears her hair in a short brown bob and the occasional swipe of lipstick, has coped by focusing on what she has gained.
Her self-esteem has blossomed, and she has forged a community with other trans women. She is finally living the way that she always wanted, she said.
“If there was ever going to be a time to do this,” Wagenblast said, “it was now.”
Fit In or Be Shunned
Wagenblast grew up in a comfortable home in Cranford, a politically moderate suburb about 10 miles southwest of Newark. Her father was a tool maker, and her mother did clerical work. She has a younger brother and sister.
Even at a time when the language to express what she was going through was more limited than it is now, Wagenblast was certain of who she was.
At first, it felt natural, and she was not embarrassed or afraid. She began to feel like she was a girl when, at 4 years old, she reached for jewelry and makeup from her grandmother’s vanity, she said. When she was 6, she switched clothes with her best friend, who was a girl. In middle school, she carried her books close to her chest the way girls often did.
It was only later, as she got older, that she began to think of herself as being somehow wrong. She was relentlessly bullied as a child, she said. Her life was made miserable until she learned to fit in so that she would not be shunned.
There were sound reasons to be intimidated into silence. When she was a teenager, Wagenblast heard about a local music teacher who transitioned and was fired. She had never met anyone else like her, and they exchanged letters and talked on the phone. Wagenblast felt a sliver of hope, tempered by a harsh reminder that if she did not conform, she would be rejected, too.
She met the woman who would become her wife one hot summer day in the 1980s at church. The woman was about to start work as a teacher at the parochial school, and their pastor asked Wagenblast, then in her early 20s, to carry the new teacher’s supplies. Within a year, they were married.
Before Wagenblast proposed, she told her girlfriend the truth. At the time, in the early 1980s, they could not imagine a world where Wagenblast could live openly as a woman, and she vowed never to go public.
They raised three daughters together; Wagenblast said they were each other’s best friend. But Wagenblast never stopped hoping that she could one day live more truthfully, she said.
Becoming Bernie
While Wagenblast was raising a family and hiding who she was, her career took off.
She loved radio journalism and worked at a station in Indiana before returning to the New York area as a traffic reporter for WABC and 1010 WINS.
Her signature gig came from the MTA, which runs the New York subway. She was working off the air in broadcasting when the authority offered her the job to record voice announcements around 2009, and she thought she would enjoy something that could make people’s day feel easier as they navigated mass transit. She said she tried to make her voice sound friendly.
“I always had tried to put what I call a smile in my voice,” Wagenblast said, describing a rich and soothing sound that resonates past the screeching of metal trains.
Her announcements are iconic, said the MTA’s acting chief customer officer, Shanifah Rieara: “Bernie is part of an exclusive group of people who have recorded subway announcements — each with their own story — highlighting the diversity that is New York City.”
Wagenblast also did gigs for New Jersey Transit, which runs buses and rail lines that connect New Jersey to New York, and has recorded announcements on the AirTrains at Kennedy and Newark airports.
Even as her life flourished, Wagenblast searched for ways to feel more like a woman. When she was in her 40s, a therapist encouraged her to transition, but she said that she was afraid of people laughing at her.
That began to change in 2017, when she downloaded a photo editing application that helped her see how she might appear with more feminine features.
After that, she started taking hormones. She changed her legal name to Bernie — a shortened version of her old name that she already used — to quietly shed her former self.
By 2022, Wagenblast had increased her dosage of estrogen, and she began to grow breasts. There was no going back, she said.
Freedom came at a price. Her wife left, Wagenblast said, after realizing that she did not want to be married to a woman. Her relationship with her daughters has been strained, she said. Wagenblast now packs her schedule to avoid feeling lonely in an empty house.
Relishing the Limelight
Her broadcast voice has made Wagenblast an integral part of the New York City subway. It has paid her bills, and it has connected her with people from all over the world.
Yet Wagenblast has also taken speech lessons to build a new voice.
Experts say there can be many benefits to vocal therapy for people who are transitioning. For some, it is necessary to feel safe from transphobic attacks. For others, it expands work opportunities.
“It is such a huge part of one’s communicative quality of life,” said Wynde Vastine, a vocal coach based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who focuses on transgender therapy.
Wagenblast has leaned into her new life by attending Pride events and speaking at community forums to spread awareness about trans issues.
During one of the first such appearances, Wagenblast came out to her neighbors in 2022 at a public meeting where Cranford residents were discussing ways to make their community more inclusive. She raised her hand and, steadying her nerves, bared her soul and braced for backlash.
“It was very difficult for me to get the words out,” Wagenblast said.
Wagenblast said she was prepared to move away if her neighbors ostracized her. Instead, she heard applause. Then she felt arms wrap around her in an embrace.
“It was just a magical moment,” said Scott Rubin, the superintendent of schools in Cranford, who was at the meeting. “I just kept thinking to myself, you know, ‘Good for you, Bernie.’”
After hiding for so long, Wagenblast is now embracing the limelight.
“If you’re already taking the subway, chances are you’re not going to avoid it just to avoid hearing my voice,” she said.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
