Coco Dominguez brings high energy to Fox 26 TV
If anyone knows how to spot a rainbow in the clouds, it’s Coco Dominguez.
The Fox 26 (KRIV-TV) entertainment and traffic reporter and former radio personality is known for her infectious, highenergy personality in front of the camera.
“I try to keep it uplifting,” said the Houston native, who says she was the shy one in a family of seven kids. “I treat viewers as if they are my friends and family. I’m the same way with them in person.”
It’s hard to believe, then, that Dominguez shied away from the camera as a child.
“I really was the quiet one. I hated being in front of the camera. I would cry whenever I had to have my photo taken. My voice was so soft and timid,” she says.
Dominguez was raised on Houston’s north side with Mexican mother and grandparents. Her parents divorced when she was 2; her Cuban father lived in Pasadena. Her family later moved to southeast Harris County, unaware that they lived close to a toxic waste dump, the Brio Refinery site. In 1992, hers was one of 1,700 families to be awarded a $207 million settlement against the companies responsible for the dump.
Dominguez, then in her early 20s, said she used part of the settlement money to pay for a trip to a DJ convention in Miami with a friend. There she met rapper Ludacris, who was a DJ at the time, and rapper Daz Dillinger, part of Snoop Dogg’s Dog Pound group who asked her to be in a video for the single “Coastin’.”
The video cameo could have been her 15 minutes of fame. It wasn’t. She later was tapped to be the host of a Houston TV video show for the defunct Soundwaves record store. Then she went on to become the first female DJ for 100.7 FM House Party, which turned into Party 104.9 FM.
Dominguez said she found her voice in radio, and it helped her overcome her shyness. She was also able to play her music as loud as she wanted.
“I love working in radio,” she says. “You’re able to talk authentically to your listeners. You get to create a spirit, vibe and mood that can really uplift and inform people.”
Dominguez married former Oiler and NFL coach Cris Dishman in 2004. She relocated with him and her daughter from a previous relationship, Bianca, now 21, to Germany, where Dishman coached. They later moved to San Francisco, where Dominguez worked as a radio DJ in English and Spanish, then to San Diego. They have a son, Ethan, 12.
The couple split up in 2012, and she returned to Houston.
Dominguez was already a fixture on Houston’s Spanish and English radio when Fox 26 invited her to do recaps of the popular “American Idol.” She joined the station full time as a traffic reporter in 2017 and began reporting an entertainment segment later that year.
Dominguez has done everything from rappeling from a 10-story building to taking first place in the camel races at Sam Houston Race Park. With the coronavirus pandemic, she’s now working from home, doing interviews via Zoom and editing her own segments.
When it comes to her style, she loves flashy, but she tones it down for TV.
“I like to have fun without overwhelming or offending anyone, but I always like a little extra,” she says. “I’m not into designers, but I’ll make whatever I wear look good.”
After nearly 20 years in media, Dominguez says she still has to pinch herself.
“I didn’t plan for any of this, but by the grace of God, it’s happened,” she says. “You have to keep learning and growing, and that’s what I’m doing.”