Few may understand how perfect that picture is: for five decades television has been Kennerley's oxygen, and in Australian television, whatever you may think of him, that little gold man represents the apex of achievement.

Kennerley's comes by virtue of her admission to the TV Week Logie Hall of Fame, just the third woman in history to receive that honour, following the late Ruth Cracknell in 2001 and actress Noni Hazlehurst in 2016.

Speaking exclusively to Fairfax Media just prior to the Logies telecast, Kennerley is surprised to be told the award itself is a proper Gold Logie, the equal of the Gold Logie which is also awarded annually to the most popular personality on TV.

"I've never had a Logie full stop, so it's like nought to hundred," she says, laughing. "It sort of dawns on you as you walk in and you see people you've worked with on and off for years, this beautiful flood of faces."

By morning, the 63-year-old former Good Morning Australia, Midday and Mornings host promises she will be wearing her newly acquired Gold Logie as a pendant.

"A doorstop isn't such a bad plan, everybody sees it, but I won't use it as a doorstop," she says. "It will probably be a pendant first and when the jewellery thing changes I will find some other way to attach it to me."

In addition to her reign as the queen of daytime television, Kennerley's early credits include a stint as an actress on The Restless Years and, more recently, appearances on Dancing with the Stars and The Celebrity Apprentice.

"I didn't realise it at first but this is now my 50th year in television and there hasn't been a single year, between one thing and another, that I have not done something on television," she says.

"I just love the business, I always knew I wanted to work in television, I just didn't know how I was going to do it," she adds. "And if I am honest, I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John but I just wasn't good enough."

Each year the magazine TV Week awards two Gold Logies: one for the most popular personality on TV and the second to an inductee to the Hall of Fame.

Kennerley's admission to the latter of the two groups casts her among some of Australian television's most influential personalities: pioneers Hector Crawford and Reg Grundy, and legends such as Graham Kennedy, Paul Hogan, Brian Henderson and the late John Clarke.

But she is just the third woman to be admitted, a thorny issue which, coupled with a lack of female Gold Logie award nominees this year - just one woman versus five men - has been a topic of some debate.

It is not the time to tackle that topic, and while Kennerley believes there is much to be done, she also acknowledges that women enjoy almost unprecedented visibility in the media.

"There are more women working in front of the cameras, and in the production of television everywhere than ever before, except the executive level," Kennerley says.

"And there are a lot of very well respected younger women working in television and its fantastic," she adds. "It feels at least 10 or 15 times as many as there were decades ago."

But for ageing women, she notes, the same cannot be said.

"We know the answer to that on Australian television, and the answer is that there isn't one," Kennerley says. "Yes, there's discrimination. What are you going to do about it? You can't do anything."

Kennerley counts just herself, the SBS newsreader (and former Gold Logie nominee) Lee Lin Chin and 60 Minutes journalist Elizabeth Hayes as the flag-bearers for older women on Australian television.

That sits in stark contrast to US television, Kennerley adds, where "you can see, on many networks, mature, educated women" such as Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Christiane Amanpour, Lesley Stahl and many others.

The past several years have, for Kennerley, been a testing time, as she has tackled her own battle with breast cancer and, more recently, an accident which has left her husband John paralysed.

"I'm alive, I'm speaking," she says, wryly, when asked how testing a time it has been for the couple. "John and I have both been tested to what I consider the limit ... and there have been some real limits," she adds.

"I always knew John was a great individual, a huge intellect but also a strong man and very funny, but until you see how someone is tested, physically and in terms of pain, you don't understand how fabulous somebody is," she says.

Kennerley credits John for taking on what she describes as "the anguish, the pain and the cruelty" of his recovery process. "I knew it was there but I visibly saw it every day, and every hour."

And, she adds, "there were moments when he asked if that's what I wanted."

Those words sit heavily with Kennerley. No sooner has she said them aloud she breaks and tears come. For a few minutes she is unable to speak. We sit in silence, just holding hands, alone with our thoughts.

Eventually she pushes aside the tears and composes herself.

"I'm fine," Kennerley says, though it is plain she is not. But she will be.

In some ways, that's the Kerri-Ann Kennerley I have known for almost three decades as an entertainment reporter.

She is sparkling and unchanging: always vivacious but sometimes very brittle, easier to hurt than she thinks, and far stronger than she would ever say. Or maybe even realise.

"To see John do what he has done, I could never have done it," Kennerley says. "I really, really doubt I could ever have gone through what he did."

"He has the most extraordinary strength of character," she adds. "That's the person I met, that I fell in love with and that I have been with for 33 years.

The experience has not turned her into an activist, she notes, but she has become a woman with a mission: to tackle much-needed changes in the fields of paraplegic and quadriplegic care.

"I'm not a real activist but I have a list of things to do," she says. "And it's getting long."

The occasion has also forced Kennerley to sit down and review clips of her earliest work, including scenes from The Restless Years and her first years on Ten's groundbreaking breakfast TV show Good Morning Australia.

"I didn't deserve to get paid for the first few years but I learned very quickly," Kennerley jokes. "I had a chutzpah that I would almost kill for now. I don't think I have anywhere near as much guts as I did then."

It is, she notes, the fulfilment of an old saying: if age only could and youth only knew.

Though she rules out a return to a daily television gig such as those which formed the larger part of her working life, Kennerley's passion for television is undiminished.

"I love working and television is still my favourite thing," she says. "I feel exactly the same about wanting to take on various projects today and tomorrow as I did when I was a teenager, when I was 25, 35 and 45.

"It's no different," she adds. "Somebody goes, here's a Gold Logie, and it's fabulous, but my feelings, my passion for television, they're not different to what they were yesterday or years ago."