Waldman, sports radio pioneer, and Sterling, voice of the Yankees: Partners in the radio booth

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - Suzyn Waldman and John Sterling have witnessed some of the greatest Yankees moments and games of this generation. Radio partners since 2005, Sterling and Waldman's unique relationship and Waldman's courageous path to the booth make New York Yankees radio network unlike any other broadcast.

"What I do in calling the games is very much what I did as a reporter," Waldman said. "My relationships with the players are what I could bring to the booth."

"Suzyn has taken the role and she has discarded some things, added some things," Sterling said. "Where she now has it down to a science."

Waldman said she can bring something to the booth that guys don't because she is emotional.

"And people want to know why," she said. "I want people to see these players as people—they're not stats."

Yankees pitcher Dellin Betances said he admires how Waldman wants to know how everything is going on the field and away from the field.

"I know everything that he went through, from the time he couldn't throw strikes. I was here when he walked people in his major league debut and when people booed him," Waldman said. "I know what that did to him, I know what that did to his family because I asked. "

Waldman told me she and Sterling are "like an old married couple." They first met at WFAN in 1987, when Waldman was doing 20-20 updates and Sterling came in to host a show. They've been friends ever since.

"We like the same music," Waldman said. "We finish each other's sentences."

"We have a relationship where we actually speak to each other on the off-days or in the winter," Sterling said.

Their connection to the past runs deep, including Waldman famously helping end the 14-year feud between George Steinbrenner and Yogi Berra in 1999.

But one season stands out.

"Suzyn and I always say that 1996 was our favorite year," Sterling said.

That same year Waldman battled breast cancer the entire season.

"The Yankees really took care of me. It was wonderful and I remember Jimmy Key, the night they won, saying to me, 'You know, you're a part of this too' as he gave me a glass of champagne," Waldman said.

Waldman beat breast cancer. But it is not surprising because she has always been a fighter.

She was the first voice heard on WFAN radio when the all-sports radio station launched in 1987. At the time, she was one of only a few women in sports broadcasting.

When Waldman became the first woman to call Major League Baseball as a full-time radio announcer, she then became the first woman in 2009 to call a World Series Game.

But it wasn't always easy.

"At the beginning here, I've gone through being spit at by players and death threats and all the things that went with being a woman in sports," Waldman said. "If you can conquer cancer, and it'll be 23 years in January. I think I'm more proud of that than anything else."