By Rebecca Flansburg Photos by Joey Halvorson
media
tess taylor the Woman Behind the Voice
W
Radio personality, Tess Taylor with her daughter, Lola.
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Summer 2014 | her voice
When many of us are still deep in slumber, WJJY’s morning show host Tess Taylor’s day is just beginning. At 3:30 a.m. this new mother gets up, gets ready for work and makes the trip from her home in Breezy Point to the BL Broadcasting Studio in Baxter. Listeners in the Brainerd lakes area are no stranger to this 17-year radio veteran’s bubbly on-air personality, but may not know her dream of broadcasting began at an early age. “I’ve always had a fascination with being on the radio,” says Tess. “My mom actually has a cassette tape of me, at around age 7, recording pretend radio shows and saying things like ‘I’m Tess Taylor and I’ll be back with the news.’ I would make my own commercials, with matching jingles, and mimic the DJs I heard on the radio. I think broadcasting has been in my blood forever!” As a Duluth native, Tess graduated from Duluth East High School in 1992 then decided to pursue her love of radio as she was finishing college. She graduated from the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1996 with a B.A. degree in communication and went to work immediately in Duluth’s radio and television market. Four years later, Tess moved to Minneapolis to take a job as the marketing director then promotions manager for Radio Disney. In 2004, she left that position and moved north to join the WJJY team. She is now a familiar voice to lakes area listeners as one half of The Morning Mess with Ken and Tess radio show on WJJY alongside radio veteran Ken Thomas weekdays from 6 to 9 a.m. Together, this dynamic duo has been informing and making WJJY listeners smile and laugh for almost 10 years. When her morning shift at WJJY is finished, Tess can also be heard from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Today’s Best Country, B93.3 FM. “I can’t believe how lucky I was to be paired with Ken Thomas almost 10 years ago,” Tess says. “We just work well together and we seem to “get” each other. I truly feel that I am in the right job, at the right place. We have so much fun here at WJJY. This is hands-down, the most cohesive team of on-air talent I have ever worked with. We are a small group that shares many duties, but everyone gets along well and respects each other tremendously.” When not co-hosting The Morning Mess or preparing the news for all the BL Broadcasting