I’m not a writer. I’m a teacher with a graduate degree in early childhood education from the University of Louisville. This degree served me well as a mother of four and grandmother of two.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a mother of three with a lovely home and a loving husband who did not love his job. He liked his job, but the people he worked with were passionate about the subject. He was passionate about Kentucky—the people, the places and the state. So when he said, “Let’s start a magazine about Kentucky,” what could I say? If you love what you do, you will never work a day. I don’t think that is precisely true about Steve and Kentucky Monthly. We have had some difficult days. I remember a 25-hour day getting the magazine ready to print. I was handed a box of “stuff” to drive to Lebanon Junction. There, Publisher’s Press would turn the data from a dozen computer disks into the issue. My, how things have changed.
I remember helping make a list of stories we should write. I thought, “What will we write about after that list is finished?” Twenty-five years later, many stories are still waiting to be written: another place, another person, another new business.
For our first three issues, we printed 50,000 copies. A semi-tractor trailer delivered the magazines to our house and filled the garage with 833 or more boxes. We had 40 subscribers. The other 49,960 copies would be loaded into the cars of our team and delivered across the state. We went to schools, libraries, visitor centers and bookstores. We sometimes inserted the magazine in the local newspaper of whichever town we featured that month.
We were creative.We were energetic.
Our goal was to have a paid circulation of 30,000.
I dreamed of the day a brown UPS truck would deliver just a few boxes of the magazine to have on hand for the next speaking event or to send as a replacement for a copy lost in the mail. It took a while to get there, but we did.
We haven’t gotten rich by any means. But that was never my husband’s goal. The goal was to produce a quality magazine about our unique state and its people. However, we have done some fantastic things. We have had dinner with the Clooneys (Rosemary, George [who secretly loves me] and Nick), Diane Sawyer, the Judds, Wendell Berry, Miss Kentucky and Miss America (several of them). We have met famous people such as Kevin Bacon (one degree of separation), Garrison Keillor, Ned Beatty and Mary Ellen Walton (Judy Norton).
We have attended openings of restaurants, venues and distilleries, complete with excellent food and drink. And don’t forget the parting gifts! Can you say bourbon? We have stayed in boutique hotels and even sailed on The Rose Sail Inn B&B, a sailboat in the British Virgin Islands with the best Dutch sailor around. We have done things that money cannot buy. Kentuckians are varied and diverse, and we have had a fantastic time learning about and meeting them. There is so much more to do.