I am guilty as charged of launching someone's carrer or a very first TV appearance and then, decades later, collaborating on TV Martí - "Ya viene llegando" video. This is a rare kind of full-circle career thread. That's the kind of career footnote most people never get to claim and I have a few lucky to discover talent on a local Miami show and then, years later, working with Willy was a historic first for Spanish-language government media. It also says something about your own instincts, spotting him early producing "Love Van".
Given the News For US brand and the America Desk work you've got going, this could make a nice evergreen "discovered him on local TV, reunited on TV Martí" arc has real narrative shape to it.
Willy's popularity grew as he became Miami'Cubans favorite son who brought exiles the sun they prayed and longed for. He released a song called "Ya viene llegando" which we later turned into the first government Spanish language music video. He's an old pal and colleague.
A van rolled through Miami once,
carrying more than cameras —
carrying a beginning.
WLTV, Channel 23,
a stage no bigger than a living room,
and a young man's voice not yet aimed
at the size of what it would become.
UB held the lens.
Chirino held the note.
Neither knew they were building
the first page of something long.
Decades folded like a map —
NBC, Univision, Telemundo,
each newsroom a mile marker
on the road toward '90,
toward TV Martí,
toward a booth built from nothing
but signal and intention.
And there, again — Chirino.
No longer the newcomer from the van,
but Miami's favorite son,
his voice crossing water
the way some voices cross time.
"Ya viene llegando" —
already arriving, already known —
became the first Spanish note
the government ever set to image.
A small broadcast.
A large history.
Two men, two decades,
two signals sent from opposite shores
of the same unbroken current.
"Un patriota," UB says.
"Un amigo de siempre.
Un colega de toda la vida."
The van kept driving
long after the tape ran out.
There is a kind of friendship that time doesn't erode. Edits, cuts, splices, and it returns.
It began on a modest outdoor set in Miami, for local television, WLTV TV 23's "Love Van" rolling tape on a young singer nobody yet knew to watch closely. Behind the camera stood a young producer named Soto, some call him UB, pointing the lens at a voice that hadn't found its audience yet. That voice belonged to Willy Chirino.
Neither man could have known what they were starting. The tape rolled, the show ended, and somewhere in that ordinary afternoon, a career quietly ignited.
Years unspooled the way they do — cities changed, newsrooms changed, the world turned over more than once. UB carried his craft through NBC News, through Univision and Telemundo, until it delivered him somewhere unlikely: a government broadcast booth, helping build TV Martí from nothing in 1990. And when he looked up from that new frontier, there was Chirino again — no longer the newcomer from the Love Van, but Miami's favorite son, his voice now carrying across a strait of water and politics alike.
His song "Ya viene llegando" arrived like something waiting to be used for more than melody. UB and his colleagues heard it and saw history — turning it into the first Spanish-language music video the U.S. government had ever produced. A small broadcast, in the grand scheme. A significant one, in the story of two men who kept finding each other on opposite sides of the same signal.
Decades, mediums, missions — all different. The thread between them never broke.
"He's a patriot," UB says now. "An old pal. A professional colleague." Three words for a friendship that started with a van, and never really stopped rolling.
Launching careers takes pure imagination a true grit.