Chandra Bill at home with husband Rob Rabenecker and sons E.J. Hughes and Aidan Hughes. (Brandon Kruse/The Post)

More: Veteran Tim Malloy announces he’s leaving Channel 5

She won’t be manning the chicken fryer at her husband’s Chick-fil-A in the Mall at Wellington Green, in case you’re wondering.

Or handing out the waffle fries.

When Chandra Bill trades Channel 5′s cameras for the kitchen late next month, after 24 years in local TV news, it will be for her own North Palm Beach kitchen.

At first, anyway.

"I’ve neglected my household and my kids, and I’d really like some time to spend with them. So for the first year I’d like to be at home catching up with those things," said Bill, 52, while preparing dinner on a recent evening.

Neglect?

Bill pulled homemade turkey meatballs and marinara sauce from a refrigerator jammed with the family meals she cooks on weekends.

Waiting nearby are her husband, Rob Rabenecker, and her sons from her first marriage. E.J. Hughes, 19, is entering Palm Beach State College. His brother, Aidan, 16, a junior at Palm Beach Gardens High School and member of a band called Red Velvet Rebellions, noodles around on a guitar while he waits.

"They always ask ‘What’s for dinner?’ and I say ‘Have you looked at the list?’ " Bill says.

The list.

Taped to the side of the refrigerator is a weekly, dawn-to-dusk schedule, with every day’s dinner menu as well as work, family, church and charitable obligations. It’s one way Bill attempts to assert control over a hectic life.

Tuesday

6 A.M. Gym – Legs.

Haircut

3-7 P.M. E.J. – work

Tilapia and capers, grilled asparagus, salad

She types the list every weekend because, despite her calm, unflappable demeanor, this local news icon is all too familiar with what can happen when life spirals out of control.

***

"What’s our lead?" Bill asks noon newscast producer Hector Caloto, from her desk in Channel 5′s huge news arena one Thursday afternoon. She’s winding down to her May 28 retirement by working four days a week at the West Palm Beach station, anchoring only the noon newscast after years of anchoring the 5 and 6 o’clock shows.

Told the weather will be the top story, she wants to know why.

"Because it’s finally nice out," comes the answer.

When her contract is up next month, Bill will leave behind more than two decades as a fixture on the top two local television stations. She landed first at WPEC-Channel 12 in 1986, four years after beginning her TV career, where her measured, dignified delivery eventually earned her the top job, anchoring the 6 and 11 o’clock news. But by the time E.J. and Aidan were in grade school, she was divorced from her first husband, schoolteacher Jim Hughes, and having second thoughts about the personal price of professional success.

"I thought, ‘I wish I could go to that ballgame that I missed, I wish I could have seen my son take his first steps,’ " she said.

Chandra Bill on the set at Channel 5. (Brandon Kruse/The Post)

In 1998, she married Rob Rabenecker, the amiable general manager of Roger Dean Stadium. Shortly afterward, family trumped ambition as she asked to be taken off the 11 o’clock show. Two years after that, she jumped ship for arch-rival and perennially top-rated WPTV-Channel 5, with the understanding she would not work nights.

"Financially it was hard because I took a big pay cut, but what it did to enrich my life at home was worth it," said Bill, who said she makes "over" six figures, despite a newsroom-wide 17 percent pay cut last year.

A fundamentalist Christian belief defines Bill and Rabenecker, who are active members of Christ Fellowship, the Palm Beach Gardens mega-church. When Rabenecker quit his baseball job – also to spend more time at home – he opened a Chick-fil-A restaurant, in large part because of the company’s espoused foundation of biblical principles. Its restaurants are closed on Sundays and the company holds voluntary Christian marriage seminars for its managers, which Bill and Rabenecker have attended.

In her car, she carries her "baseball cards," – small cards with her photo and her Christian testimony, but gives them only to people who ask.

"There was a time when some people at work thought I was using my position to preach," she says, adding that she’s since learned the power of quieter persuasion.

"If I’m not preaching, just setting an example, there are no reasons for anyone to feel offended. Because I’m a person of faith, doesn’t mean I’m less of a journalist; it makes me more of a journalist because it makes me more compassionate."

Still, stepping off the public stage will be a relief to both of them, Rabenecker said.

"Now, we can be more outward in our expression of faith than we could in the baseball stadium or TV station," he said.

***

Bill’s staunch beliefs may be traced to a tumultuous childhood that ended too soon. Her father was stationed in Japan with the Army when he married Bill’s mother, Toshino, who spoke no English and had only a fifth-grade education. They lived for a time in California, where memories of Japanese internment camps were so recent that Toshino was told not to teach her children Japanese.

The family shuttled from base to base, eventually settling in Augusta, Ga.

Military kids learn to fit in quickly in new schools and new neighborhoods, a survival skill made more difficult when you’re a first-generation Japanese-American with exotic looks.

"You have to have discipline and you learn to adapt," said Bill, whose protective cover in Georgia included a Southern accent. "When I started in TV, it took me a while to learn to say ‘child’ instead of ‘chi-eld.’ "

There were other struggles. When Bill was 15, her father, an alcoholic, died of melanoma. Overnight, she became the head of a small, troubled household that included her younger brother, Konrad, who has learning disabilities. Her mother, who is "4-foot-10 and 93 pounds but a tough little lady," packed cookies at the Murray Biscuit Co. to send Bill to Augusta College near their home.

Bill relates the story bluntly, without a trace of self-pity.

"The fact that I had to be an adult at age 15 taught me a lot of skills early. The great thing is, when you have kids, you get to be a kid again."

But that wasn’t nearly the end of the family drama.

Her brother is in jail. An alcoholic who has at times been homeless, Konrad was sentenced after walking away from a court-ordered treatment program. His sister has put him through "every alcohol abuse program in Palm Beach County."

She also supports her mother, 84, who lives in West Palm Beach and has dementia.

But even when describing heartbreak, Bill remains a self-possessed professional. She has an anchor’s ear for the perfect soundbite.

"I don’t regret being poor. I don’t regret the fact that my father was an alcoholic because it made me stronger, in some respect, than somebody else who doesn’t have those challenges," she said.

***

As devoted as she is to her faith, Bill is far from a self-righteous killjoy. Just ask her pals.

Her close cadre of girlfriends includes Channel 12 anchors Liz Quirantes and Claudia Shea, who meet several times a year for raucous "Thelma and Louise" parties. Their friendship began when they worked together in the 1990s, then deepened during that great female bonding experience: simultaneous pregnancies. Once or twice a year, they travel out of town for a girls’ getaway.

"We find a cool hotel and we always have a drink in our hands," says Quirantes, one of Bill’s best friends despite being a long-time professional rival. "We never talk about the station’s strategy for the (ratings) book. When we’re together, it’s about our friendship."

Tim Malloy, her co-anchor at both Channels 12 and 5, recalls earlier days of cigarettes and drinks after work.

"We don’t do that anymore," said Malloy, now an investigative reporter at Channel 5, "but Chandra still likes to kick back and laugh. And, although she has that austere beauty thing going, she’s also a really good reporter."

He points to the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in January, when Bill grabbed a camera and headed to Port-au-Prince, her fifth or sixth trip to cover stories there.

"She’s a pro and she got really good stuff," he said, advising the station’s fresh-faced hires to take note.

"Every young woman reporter should look at her and say, ‘I want to be like her.’ She’s cool under pressure. She worries about content and she still believes there’s a public service element of what we do."

While Bill won’t regret for going the heavy make-up and perfect anchor hair the job demands, she says she will miss the daily roller-coaster ride of the news business.

"One day you’re talking to a little kid from Pahokee who ends up talking to the president, the next day you’re speaking to Mikail Gorbachev. I mean, where else can you do that kind of stuff but working in television?"

But TV news, like all journalism, has suffered from dwindling revenues. Local stations increasingly require reporters to shoot and edit their own stories, one of the reasons Bill is leaving with few regrets.

Chandra and Rob laugh as they enjoy the evening in front of their home in North Palm Beach. (Brandon Kruse / The Post)

"The industry has changed over the years. I love the people, and I love the purpose. I don’t particularly love picking up a camera and tripod in the middle of a South Florida summer," she said.

Nor will she miss the round-the-clock coverage during hurricanes, when at times she wasn’t sure her own family was safe.

Last fall, the gruesome Thanksiving Day death of a friend’s 6-year-old daughter helped cement her decision to retire, she said.

Makayla Sitton was one of four people shot to death, allegedly by a relative, in their Jupiter home after a holiday dinner. Makayla’s father, Jim, is a Channel 5 cameraman and a close friend of Bill’s.

"It made me realize the value of family and my faith and what I want to do with the rest of my life," she said.

Channel 5′s general manager, Steve Wasserman, praised Bill’s "compelling but soothing on-air delivery," but said he didn’t try to persuade her to stay. "This is the path she chose to take," he said.

***

As she prepares to tape a tease for the upcoming noon newscast, Bill clips a microphone to her suitdress, in her trademark shade of ruby red.

"A wily coyote going wild in the Big Apple," she says, looking into the camera.

She has bunched the jacket’s fabric together in the back with a clip, as if she’s wearing a larger person’s clothes.

Which she is. She recently lost 17 pounds, but with retirement so close, buying new anchor clothes seems pointless.

"There’s a sale at Saks," someone points out.

"I don’t shop at Saks," said Bill, firmly. "When I came to Palm Beach, I realized you can get designer clothes at Goodwill."

Now that’s breaking news! Those ladylike suits and pretty pastel jackets come from a thrift shop?

"I’ve gotten some incredible things there," said Bill, who frequently takes other Channel 5 staffers on her thrifting patrols.

As proof, she pulls out a new Louis Vuitton wallet she snagged for $9.

"Nine dollars! Can you believe it," she chortles. "Last week, I found a black Nicole Miller suit for $10.99."

Later, Rabenecker asked, "Did she tell you I got her a Goodwill gift certificate for Christmas?"

***

After she leaves TV news at the end of next month, Bill promised herself she’d take a year off before beginning any new projects. Yet the workaholic multi-tasker has already lined up a part-time job.

Really, how could she turn down a chance for business cards that read "Dream Manager"? Especially when the job offer comes from her husband?

In keeping with Chick-fil-A’s philosophy of serving its employees as well as its customers, Bill will be charged with making dreams come true for the restaurant’s managers, cooks and counter staff.

"One guy wants (to buy) a home, another gal wants to go to college. Everybody’s got a dream. As a journalist, I know how to do the necessary research," she said.

Bill and Rabenecker have their own dream to manage, too. They hope to open a second, free-standing Chick-fil-A in Wellington.

It all might be summed up by a poster in Bill’s kitchen.

"Make it through the ‘moment’ … and you will make it to your milestone," it reads.

"Oh, that’s just about my diet," she says.

But it could easily describe so much more.