The campus spot Dana Kozlov should say is her all-time favorite is the cozy corner of the Illini Union where she spent hours upon hours studying.
“I liked the hushed, crowded solitude" of the wood-paneled, small lounge on the east side of the Union, she says.
But let’s be real.
“The place that still makes me smile in recollection is, yes, a bar," says the reporter/anchor for CBS Chicago.
That would be O’Malley's. "I not only hung out there but worked there until I was ‘fired’ days before finishing college," Kozlov says. "I was literally lifted from behind the bar and over to the patron side by bouncer Big Walt.
"It’s where I spent time with my favorite people, including my still-best friend in the world and other strangers-turned-friends I am still close with today.
“And every time I hear ‘American Pie,’ I am taken right back to a campus experience and education that shaped my adult life.”
