Biographie
She was born in Mullins, South Carolina, and raised in Florence, South Carolina. Except for kindergarten and first grade, she attended Florence Christian School from 2nd-12th grades (except for 4th grade because she skipped that one).
She graduated as salutatorian in a class of 18 students in 1984 and then attended Liberty University on a scholarship for one year. When the scholarship ran out, she ran home. She went to Francis Marion University for one semester and hated it so much that she dropped out of school. But she kept a promise to her mother and went back to finish her education, receiving a BA in English from FMU in 1993.
After dropping out of college, she worked for her parents, who owned a shoe store and a Western wear business. She wanted to be an actress, so she signed up to take acting lessons at the only place in town that offered anything close to an acting lesson: Valdotti's School of Modeling. She went to a convention in Myrtle Beach, SC, to be seen by agents from across the country and was offered a deal as a plus-sized model.
After breaking down in tears, she declined. But the owner of a radio station thought she was funny and said she should consider going into radio. So, on returning home to Florence, she called the manager of WJMX and told him she was funny and asked for a job. They hired her to work part-time, and basically she would sit there with the Morning guy and if he used her for anything, she got paid minimum wage. Basically, after taxes, she was earning about $10 a week. She was 19. Within a few months, the newsgirl quit and they asked her if she'd like to do that for a while. Again, it was minimum wage, but she absolutely loved it.
She kept going to acting conventions, and an agent in Atlanta finally agreed to take her on. So on January 1, 1990, she got a $500 advance on her MasterCard and moved to Georgia. She waited tables for a year and a half, listening to her parents constantly begging her to come home and finish college. So she went back home, and went back to WJMX to see if they could use her for voiceover work or anything. The morning guy on their new "light and easy Sunny 102.9" had walked off the air in a snit that morning, so they asked if she would mind filling in for him until they could hire another 'man' to host the show. She ended up hosting it, herself, for the next two and a half years!
During that time, she hosted the morning show on Sunny 102.9, went immediately to classes as a full-time student at FMU, left there to go manage her parents' Western wear store, and did weekend weather on the local CBS affiliate, WBTW. It was also during this time that she developed her first gray hairs...
She moved to Dallas to work on 106.1 KISS FM and her first day on the air was May 31, 1994. Once she got here, she went on a few auditions and even landed a small part in a made-for-TV movie, called Holiday in Your Heart (1997), starring LeAnn Rimes.
She's since done some voiceover work for radio commercials and co-hosted the webcast of the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. She won a spot on "Women of Radio" week on "Live with Regis" and got to co-host a show with him. That was on Friday, October 27, 2000, to be exact!
