Bernie Wagenblast: Voice of NYC subway admits she's a trans woman, uses 'guy voice' professionally
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Any resident of New York or a visitor to the city has heard Bernie Wagenblast's voice pound throughout the numbered subway lines of the Big Apple, informing travelers when a train is nearing the station or how distant the next one is. And there is a crucial feature about Wagenblast that no one could have predicted.
Recently, Wagenblast — who also provides the announcements for the AirTrain at Newark Liberty International Airport and the PATCO system in South Jersey and Philadelphia—came out as a transgender woman, according to DailyMail. Wagenblast, 66, of Cranford, New Jersey is a frequent user of the subway in New York City, but only a few riders are able to identify the booming voice carried over the platform by name or face. She first announced her intention to transition in December 2022. When this happened, Wagenblast wrote on social media, "Beginning January 1st, I plan to begin living as a female full-time."
READ MORE
'I've only been using this voice full-time since January 1'
Wagenblast confessed on Anna Sale's podcast 'Death, Sex, and Money' that she still uses her disembodied voice professionally even though she now sounds substantially different after working with a speech therapist to refine her feminine voice as estrogen does not alter a person's vocal range.
Wagenblast, who came out as transgender on December 28, said, "I've only been using this voice full-time since January 1. Before that, I had been working on it, but most of my conversation was what I call my guy voice, and professionally I still use that voice," according to DailyMail.
When did Bernie Wagenblast discover she is trans?
Wagenblast recalled that she first began to notice that she felt more like a girl than a boy when she was just four years old, according to DailyMail. She said, "I remember clearly being at my grandmother's house, sitting in front of her vanity, putting on some of her necklaces, and I think she had powder at her vanity and putting that on my face. It felt good. It felt natural. It felt like: 'why can't I do this?'"
'I would start to change things here and there'
The married parent of three girls said that she began hormone therapy initially, followed by a purchase of more androgynous attire, and finally changed her name officially to Bernadette. She said, "I did what I think is a rather slow but deliberate transition, and I would start to change things here and there."
Wangerblast stated, "One of the first things I did was I went on the lowest dose possible of hormone replacement therapy in the hope that maybe that would be enough, that that would make me feel calm. And I think just the knowledge that I now had estrogen in my bloodstream felt so good."
Wagenblast chose blonde hair that was shoulder-length after transitioning, and she is still working on raising the pitch of her voice. She has been attempting to use her new voice "more and more" so that it "becomes more natural," but for the time being, she will continue to use her well-known dulcet tone for the subway announcements.
Wangerblast also did this when asked to record the new audio for Newark's new airport terminal. She admitted that using her "guy voice" to record the new announcements was "strange," but she now finds it "a lot easier" to flip between the two sounds.
The MTA, which manages the NYC subway system, backed its employee on social media by posting a link to the podcast on its LinkedIn page. Although Wagenblast continues to use her "guy voice" for the subway announcement and all other professional work, she claimed to experiment with using a feminine voice for her work on Transportation Radio and Cranford Radio.