Photo courtesy of Bernie Wagenblast

Cranford resident and voice of the MTA Bernie Wagenblast

Millions of commuters and city-goers hear the voice of lifelong Cranford resident Bernie Wagenblast daily on the subway. “Please stand away from the platform edge,” or “The downtown two train is approaching the station,” are among the sounds that make up New York City. But today, Wagenblast is expressing something new: her true identity as a transgender woman.

From her earliest memories, Wagenblast felt like a girl. She said, “I was probably four or five years old at my grandmother’s house, and I was sitting at her vanity putting powder on my face and putting her necklaces on.” But in the 1950s and 60s, being transgender was far from being socially tolerated, and her parents said it was “not acceptable behavior.”

So she lived her life as a man and distracted herself by focusing on her passion for radio. Wagenblast said, “From about fifth grade, I knew I wanted to be on the radio. When I was a kid, I would take The Star Ledger each morning and practice reading the paper out loud so that I could develop my voice.”

Wagenblast attended Seton Hall University because of the school’s top-ranked college radio station, WSOU. By her senior year she was the station manager, the top student position.

As a student broadcaster, Wagenblast met President Gerald Ford at the White House, attended the Democratic National Convention and participated in Army basic training at Fort Dix for a feature story. A few years into her professional career, she was hired by the New York City Department of Transportation in Queens. Wagenblast had been working for TransCom, a new organization that coordinated all the tri-state area transportation agencies, including the MTA.

When the MTA added Countdown Clocks in 2009, they asked Wagenblast to be their voice. “I must have done about 1,000 separate recordings,” she said. “When you hear it on the subway, it’s piecing together little bits of recorded information to make a coherent sentence. So I was in the studio saying ‘northbound, southbound, Bronxbound, Brooklynbound, Queensbound. One, two, three, first, second, third,’ and so on. It took about two days to do.” At just 23-years-old, Wagenblast’s voice was being heard by every commuter in the tri-state area.

But Wagenblast was only recognizable to millions by her voice. “They have no idea what you look like,” she said. “So I move through life anonymously with that.”

In the background of her successful and passionate radio career, gender dysphoria persisted.

Wagenblast said, “I thought about being a girl probably at least once every hour of my waking life.” She wondered what it would be like to be on her deathbed and never have experienced life as a woman in public.

So, with the help of a support group and friends, Wagenblast attended an event in a dress and heels in November of 2022. She described that night as her “Cinderella night.” There was no way she could go back to her life as a man. On Jan. 1 2023, she began her public life as a woman.

Now, Wagenblast has received media attention, opportunities to voice act for projects with Lin-Manuel Miranda for his album Warriors and made her off-Broadway debut in Trans Activist Dylan Mulvaney’s one-woman show.

When asked what advice she would give to high schoolers, Wagenblast said, “If somebody comes out to you, as trans or queer, don’t feel you have to have all the answers. They’re not coming to you for answers. They just want to know that you are still going to be their friend, and that you’re going to stand by them.”