Gracie: Hi, thank you so much for joining us here with She Boss. I am with Grace Anello, Morning Meteorologist, here at WAAY 31 News. I am so excited to talk with you today. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Our team really admires Grace and loves what she does in STEM in our community. And I’m so excited. Thank you for coming. 

 

Grace: I am too. Thank you for having me. This is an honor, and I’m excited to hang out. 

 

Gracie: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s just start from your beginning. Tell us where you’re from and your background. 

 

Grace: So, I was born—actually not far from Little Italy. My whole family is super tiny. I was born in Connecticut and raised in Atlanta. And so, I say I am an Atlanta girl, and that was really fun, and I went to school in the Mississippi State for college, and now I am here in Huntsville.

 

Gracie: So tell us, growing up, what kind of started the passion that you have for science.

 

Grace: So I have two older brothers; they’re much older. My whole life, I just always wanted to do what they were doing for their career. One of them wanted to be a lawyer. So I wanted to be a lawyer. One wanted to be a physical therapist. So that’s what I wanted to do, and then be an eye doctor. And it just kind of kept going that way. And I was really in high school when I thought, ‘Okay, wait a minute, I’m going to sign up for something for my whole life that I didn’t even really pick.’ So I started really thinking about what I wanted to do and kind of settled on being an eye doctor. And then took chemistry and was, I guess, an immediate and hard no, and transferred over to physics. That was the time I was taking honors physics in high school. And it turns out that I loved it—all the calculations, all of the speed. I thought it was exciting—the science, you know—it’s not just something that sits on a page flat. It is actually how things move around you. And so I love translating that; seeing what I was doing in my homework, I could see when I was at volleyball practice. I could see the acceleration, and I could see the angle and trajectory and things like that. 

 

And so, I just really looked for what I could do that involves physics in a profession. I didn’t want to be just a lab coat scientist; I wanted something where I could have a personality and hang out with people. So it kind of backdoored into weather quite honestly. I always liked it. I always liked weather, but it honestly was more of an analytical decision than anything else. Turns out, I just became completely fascinated with the combination of the two, and so it worked out really well. 

 

Gracie: That’s awesome. You mentioned volleyball, and from what we know about you behind the camera, we know of your competitive nature. Did that start with your big brothers? 

 

Grace: Oh, without question, so I come from a family of athletes. My dad played basketball in college. My mom was a track star. My brothers are very large and competitive as well. And that was always what we did for fun; every Thanksgiving and every Christmas, it was playing in the yard and joking around and wrestling in the living room. So that became a thing, and ‘Oh, we’ll go easy on baby sister Grace was not how that happened’. So it kind of translated and it stuck with me. And now they joke like what happened—you’re more competitive than the rest of us, you know.

 

Gracie: Yeah, absolutely, so outside of sports, what were you interested in growing up? 

 

Grace: Well, there wasn’t much outside of sports, to be honest with you. I played on the club team, and we competed at the Junior Olympics a couple times, and that was a really big commitment. When I wasn’t playing. I was working out, and we had two dogs at home that I just did everything with. We had them from when I was itty bitty; I was always walking them, playing with them, taking pictures of them that they hated. So it was fun.

 

Gracie: So, watching you on the news, we know you are a huge Mississippi State fan.

 

Grace: Yes

 

Gracie: How did your journey take you to the state?

 

Grace: My older brother, Anthony, committed to play baseball in Mississippi State when I was 11 and so when your sibling is an athlete in college, you go for all their games, and so I just kind of grew up in Starkville and I really liked it. My parents always made a big deal about safety for me, especially as the only girl. We want you to feel safe. We want you to feel happy. You shouldn’t have to worry. So, cute little Starkville, Mississippi, where no one ever got was a really easy place for me to want to be. Then, of course, it turns out that they have the best meteorology school in the country, and it was like, ‘Okay, why would I go anywhere else? You know, I grew up going there. I feel happy and at home there and I can get this really powerful degree. I think that is what I have to do.

 

Gracie: Tell us more about what you were involved in there. 

 

Grace: Everything under the sun, so I wanted to play volleyball there and that did not happen. So I played club volleyball and that was a lot of fun. That actually really forced me to get out of my shell. I had never been anything other than a volleyball player. I was a soccer player, then a gymnast, then a volleyball player. That’s all I was. So not having that was crazy, and I was going to college, meeting these people for the first time; they didn’t know that about me. So I had to find something else to be my identity. And so I just kind of touched on everything. I competed in  a pageant for the first time in my life and that was really great. I was an athletic tutor because I still wanted sports to be a part of my life, so baseball, basketball, men’s basketball, football, golf, and women’s golf and women’s tennis. I was an athletic tutor and that was so fun, getting to hang out with those student athletes and teach them. What else did I do? I was involved in helping people have tours in my role at Mississippi State; I was always with prospective new students and their parents. I was in a sorority and a lot of different volunteer organizations. I was involved heavily with Make A Wish Foundation, so just kind of whatever came my way, I was doing it, a couple different national honor societies, things like that. 

 

Gracie: So tell us a little bit about the pageant. If I’m not wrong, you did some sort of science act as your talent. 

 

Grace: Yes, so Mississippi State has two pageants, Miss Maroon and White and Miss Mississippi State—Miss MSU. So I competed in Miss Maroon and White first, and that had 38 other women. And I really did it more for the interview experience. I’ve never done a pageant in my life; I was like, What is this, you know? But I thought you have to interview in life, and this is the interview-based competition, and so I’ll do that, and at worst, I get practice, and if I win, I get a scholarship. So that ended up going really well. I had a wonderful coach in my sorority, and she really helped me. So I ended up winning that, and it was great, which kind of started the fire of, ‘Okay, well, maybe I’ll do miss MSU also, and then I’ll compete in Miss America organization.’ And thought, ‘Maybe that’s a dream’, you know. So for Miss MSU, you have to have a competition, and I don’t have a talent like musically. So I thought, ‘Okay’. I tried desperately to learn the piano. I was like, ‘I can do this.’ I enrolled in the piano class, had a private teacher, but it did not happen. So I was like, ‘I just have to do what I can do.’ So I did science, and I created a forecast. You have 90 seconds and it was a little bit of spoken word. It was kind of comical, but it also fully gave the science. I walked through terms like condensation nuclei, condensation nucleation, and the process with the nuclei. We walked through diurnal heating, different science terms that you may not have known, and did it in 90 seconds in a ball gown on the stage. And they told me after that, not only was I the first person in the state to compete with a science talent, but I was the first person in the state of Mississippi to compete with a science talent. At the time, Miss America had won with chemistry talent. So I felt really excited to do my science too. So I ended up being the first runner-up; I did not win but it was pretty cool to make school history in that way. 

 

Gracie: Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine that there were a lot of eyes that were on you in the science community after that.

 

Grace: There were, and there were a lot of eyes on me during the competition when I walked out and this huge projector screen rolled out behind me and they were like, ‘That’s not a microphone. She’s not singing.’

 

Gracie: ‘That’s different.’

 

Grace: Yes, the judges just kind of stared at me but yeah, it was great. It went really well and the reaction of the crowd was really positive so that was really nice to hear. 

 

Gracie: I want to talk about this more later when we get into Grace’s girls club but I can imagine little girls there. That’s kind of being a game changer. You are here expected to sing a song or dance but you are all out with that and that is what you do. Were there any little girls that really looked up to you and wanted to take pictures after?

 

Grace: Always, there were always girls. The crown was fairly large and then you have a stash that’s all bedazzled and so you stand out in every crowd and I am 5’10, so put me in heels and a crown and you notice. Always, little girls would come up to me and they were just so sweet. Most of them thought I was a Barbie; they didn’t realize and they would bring up their little dolls and little Barbies, and they just wanted to take pictures. And I love that at that age, you don’t have any limits; when you are four, in your mind, you are limitless. And so they would come to me and say, ‘I am going to be just like you one day and I want to do that. I can be a Barbie too.’ I would always be like, ‘Yeah, and you can and you should. I’m the shiny example of ‘never done this before’ but I can do it too. It is so sweet. I have so many pictures of little mini mes and their little outfits and they were awesome to me. That was really exciting to see their joy.

 

Gracie: That’s so exciting. I couldn’t imagine growing up and meeting you at that age. I would be so excited about that and seeing something different because I can’t sing; I am not a musical talent. I would have been like, “Oh my goodness, there’s something else.” You know what I mean?

 

Grace: And I remember when I was at that point. From Atlanta, the big thing was to go and meet the Falcons cheerleaders every year and they always went out of their way to be so nice to all little girls and they would take pictures with us and sign cards for us and everything else. So the opportunity to be that for somebody else was really important to me.

 

Gracie: Yeah, for sure, so while you were in college, you were going to be doing some kind of internship; tell us about that. Were you working with any news stations that stuck out to you?

 

Grace: Yes, so I had three internships. I had one with a commercial production company in Atlanta; I had another that was a virtual internship for online meteorology, just kind of a resource center more than anything else. And then I had an internship with News 2 in Nashville and that was going into my senior year and it was incredible. Danielle Breezy is still a metereologist there so News 2 and WAAY 31 are ABC stations so we like that we have that connection. She was the best, and still is to this day, the best mentor I could have asked for. If she did it, I did it. There was no ‘I am doing this as the salaried metereologist; you are just my college intern and you will observe me doing it.’ I think I observed for maybe two days and then the whole rest of the time I was there it was, write this web article, research this, write me a brief on why you think this topic is important and let’s talk about how you would convey that to the public in layman’s terms. What can I help you with scientifically? How can you do this? One day, are you going to take the AMS exam to get your seal, which is the most prestigious thing you can get in our company? Here are a couple things that I want you to know about that. There is nothing she didn’t share with me and it was absolutely awesome.

 

Gracie: I know Mississippi State is a great school for meteorology, and I am sure when you’re getting that hands-on experience so much that you’re learning what you couldn’t have in the classroom, what are some of those things that you learned that surprised you? 

 

Grace: So I always said putting on our makeup was my favorite time of the day because she’s so busy. She’s incredibly talented and incredibly well recognized so everyone wants a piece of her time but you’ve got to do your makeup before the show. So I would run to the makeup room with all the lights and that’s when she would share the best snippets with me. She was one that really instilled in me the importance of being in schools in your community, and she was so true. She said, “If you know a community’s children, then you know the community, because each kid is a piece of their family and their little town, and what their interests are. You can meet one child and now you know their family.” And that has been so true. 

 

She talked to me about the importance of just being kind to everybody in the office, in every position. Don’t just stick to meterologists; talk to news, talk to production, talk to your bosses, talk to sales, be with everyone, be friends with everybody and then mostly just about enjoying the job. We are here for a purpose. Our job is to save lives and to save property and if that’s where your enjoyment comes from, that can’t be taken away. If you are finding the enjoyment in the lights and the glitz and the dresses, that will all fade, but when your purpose is protecting your people; you claim your community as your people, protecting their possessions, then that doesn’t change because that need is always there. 

 

Gracie: That’s amazing advice. 

 

Grace: I know; she’s incredible and still is to this day. I call her my weather aunt; she calls me her weather niece and we are very close.

 

Gracie: So, did she help you in the next phase when you were looking for where you were going to work or where your journey goes next and mentoring you through that?

 

Grace: She absolutely did. So, WAAY 31 reached out to me in October, my senior year, which typically earlier than I was prepared to start hearing from news stations so I called frantically and was like, ‘I just got an email from a news director. What do I do? I didn’t even know they knew I existed.’ And she was so calm, cool, and collected, and like, ‘Okay, think about this, you are signing up to spend at least a few years, if not significantly more, of your life here; could you see yourself blending in with this town?’ Is it geographically located with the weather that you want?’ Hurricanes—they don’t really do it for me, to be honest with you. I understand the importance of that but as far as forecasting, it is not really interesting, so someplace on the coast would not be ideal for me. I am not a big fan of the fire weather so I wouldn’t have gone anywhere on the west coast but here in North Alabama, we have tornadoes, which I would say lightening concentration so tornadoes and lightening and a little bit of snow; we have heat waves and hail; everything that I was interested in is located in this region and that was really important to me too.

 

Gracie: So, tell us about your first impression of Huntsville, the people, and the community. Was it what you expected from Alabama?

 

Grace: No, so I have a brother that lives in Birmingham and I thought, ‘Well, Huntsville must just be Birmingham 2.0.’ It is not. Birmingham is awesome; I love it and I spend a lot of time there but they are two completely different towns and two completely different people groups. So, raised in Atlanta, I was a city girl and didn’t know anything other than that. My parents were raised in New York City till they moved to Atlanta, so that was all I knew. Then I go to small town Mississippi, where there are like three people in the whole town. It turned out that I like that a lot more, which shocked everybody, including me. I toyed for so long with just staying in Starkville: do I stay to get my Masters, do I stay at a station locally just because I didn’t leave and I loved that way of life? But I knew I needed something a little bit bigger. I wanted something just out of reach that I could grow into that still had a lot of that small town southern charm in that community aspect and Huntsville was that and I was not expecting it. 

 

My mom and I came in for my interview; we stayed for two days. When we first drove into Huntsville, we took 565; we didn’t really know what it was at the time. And I was like, ‘Okay, this is nice.’ And on our way up to the station, up to Montesino, we drove through downtown Huntsville, and then we hit Twickenham, and when we got to those beautiful historic houses, I was like, ‘Okay, this is a town. This isn’t just a downtown metro area. This is a town where people live’, you know? And immediately I looked at her and said, “Okay, I’m gonna live here.” And she said, “Okay, well, let’s go meet who you might be working with. Let’s see what that all is like,” you know? I said, “Okay, but I’m probably gonna live here, so, like, unless that goes terribly, this is the plan.” And then, of course, came up here; the drive up the mountain is beautiful. Everyone couldn’t have been nicer. They were invested in me. They knew all about me before I even walked in the building. And so it was like, ‘Okay, this is where I’m going.’ It was the coolest thing. I always pray that God make a way, make a way, make a way when I need a job. So I stayed there and said, ‘Okay, God made a way’. 

 

Gracie: He is literally a genius. So you moved to Huntsville at prime time. We were the best city in America, wasn’t it?

 

Grace: Yes 

 

Gracie: About three years ago so you’re coming with the big wave. How many times has it been said to you—”Well, Huntsville’s changed so much in the last 5–10 years?” 

 

Grace: No less than four times a day. 

 

Gracie: Yeah, I hear it all the time. I grew up with the hours south of here, so I grew up coming here. I saw some of that change, but someone’s always going to remind me of it. How do you feel about the growth that just keeps continuing and the number of people coming in—more people in your community to keep safe? What’s your perspective on that? 

 

Grace: Ugh, my goodness, such a catch 22. Personally, I think we should put walls around the city and not let another person in. We got a good thing going. Let’s just keep our little family orientation here. However, additionally, I really don’t like change. The decor in my house hasn’t changed since the day that I moved here, because I do things my own way and that’s how I like it. But then I also remember the opportunity that I was given, someone that didn’t even know really that Huntsville existed. I have family and friends about an hour away, but I really didn’t know Huntsville proper. So I wouldn’t ever want to deny that to anybody else. I love the diversity in Huntsville. I like the people you meet that are from different places, but all are here for the same reason, and they like it. I like that people like our town; that’s why it’s so clean. That’s why it’s so easy to get around. That’s why we have places like Providence, like Midcity, like downtown, that are so walkable, like Big Spring Park. It is what it is like to be in Huntsville. So having more people to share that with is like, ‘Alright, yeah, come on board’. 

 

Gracie: So you started at WAAY; what is your first major storm that you covered that was an eye opener for you? 

 

Grace: So in college, you do mocks of your weather coverage. We archive data from severe storms and things of that nature and go back and cover it as if it were real time. And of course, you know, 22/23 year old me thought that I had done plenty of severe weather coverage and I saw it in my internship. It is not the same as when you’re here; it’s definitely not the same as when you’re here alone. 

 

So the time I was still on weekends, and we had two tornadoes at one time, and then a small break and then another one, and that was huge. And I just thought, ‘I know exactly what to do. I am going to remain calm and I am going to have urgency in my voice but I don’t want to scare anybody and that’s how I am going to do it.’ Then you realize, all of a sudden, I have lived here for four months; what is that road two and a half hours away? I don’t even know how to pronounce that. And you’re having all these second thoughts while you’re on camera, like, ‘How can I keep you safe when I can’t pronounce your street name?   also, I really want you to know about this.’

 

And it was just so much going on. Everybody here reached out afterwards, ‘Here’s what you did well, here’s what you need to work on, and there you go’. The next time, which I think was maybe two weeks later, we had another tornadic event. It was just a breath of fresh air. It’s like, ‘Okay, I had been through it before; I knew what I needed to do, and I had that feedback’. It was the tornado in Hazel Green back in April of 2023 and that was a big one. It was probably the largest to this day tornado that I’ve seen form in real life, in real time, and it’s so difficult because we’re here, right? I’m in Huntsville, so I’m safe from the Hazel Green tornado. I know that’s not going to hit me and hurt me, but I feel every ounce of it for you, and my job is to protect you, and not just during it but before, because if I tell you there’s a tornado right now and you need to evacuate, is too late. You needed to know that three days ago. So it really pulls on your heartstrings. I feel the same way during hurricanes. I just wish I was there with you. I just wish there was more that I do. I wish I could tell you. I wish I could see that you’re okay; watch you evacuate your house. So they’re all very memorable, but that was the first time that I ever felt just a sense of protection, of like, ‘I need to protect you right now. What can I do to keep you safe?’ And you are just waiting for it to end so that you can get the report of, ‘Okay, everyone’s okay’, and it’s like you are family with them.

Gracie: Yeah, you talked about when the storm was happening and you had those second guesses, like, What is the name of that street? Am I going to pronounce it the right way? I have noticed, and I know you learn this in school but you do a great job of thinking on your feet and having those go-to statements. I have mentioned this to you before, like what to know before you  walk out the door, those sorts of things, which I am a literature nerd so I always find that very interesting. Did you have a class that they told that this is the statement that you’re going to say before you tell them to walk out the door in the morning or here is the way you should approach that? I don’t know. I feel like there should be a whole class or series of classes to really hone in that skill.

 

Grace: Well, there are. Itis basically our green screen class. You take it for two years straight. Our Professor, Lindsey Poe she is just absolutely famous at Mississippi because she’s that good at her job, and she takes from a little nothing your first day on the green screen to all the way when you graduate and helps negotiate your TV contract. And it varies per person; for some people, she would say, ‘See if you can say something funny.’ And with me, she would say, “You’re thinking in your head; ‘when I get to this slide, I’m gonna say something funny here and they are gonna love it.’” And she was like, ‘It is too staged; it has got to flow from you naturally. People are gonna know if this is so planned out.’ But I am the most Type A person in the world so I was like, “What do you mean? I have a timed-out list; what are you talking about?” We worked a lot with her on that. My internship was a lot of help in that as well. But we talked a lot, connecting the dots for viewers. So when you’re watching me on TV, there’s a lot happening for you, right? I am there; you have to see me as a person. My hands are moving, so that’s something visual; you’re listening to me and there are graphics behind me that are usually moving and have multiple points of data so there is a lot that I am asking you to focus on at one time. When I say at five o’clock, it is going to rain and you have to think, ‘Oh my gosh, I am just picking my kids up from daycare or that’s when I am coming back from work or I have to start dinner at five o’clock. Now, you are not hearing the next thing I say. That’s too much for you as someone on TV, I can make that easier for you by saying, ‘At 5pm when you’re just heading home from work.’ Because now I have kind of connected those dots for you, you can stay with me. We worked a lot on that, like, okay, at 8 am, where would you be normally? What would you normally be doing? How can I present a forecast that caters to your daily routine-oriented needs?

 

Gracie: Are there any times where you have just totally messed that up? I will have nights where I will be trying to go to sleep and I remember if I said something on live television that did not make any sense. I have never seen you do it but I just wonder.

 

Grace: Oftentimes, I just laugh at it. The other day, I went through three slides saying, “On Monday, On Monday, On Monday,” and then I just looked at the camera and said, “It’s Wednesday and I have been saying all day, Monday,” and I said, “Everything I just said, today on Wednesday.” It just kept going, like, are you kidding me and you just have to roll with it. There are definitely those times, without question.

 

Gracie: So what’s it been like learning and working with Jeff Castle, chief meteorologist? 

Grace: It’s been great. So when I started here, there were several different situations happening with the chief meteorologist. He came here after I had been here about a year and a half. I was a little unsure. What do you do when you have a new boss? And he has made it so easy on us. He is so personal. He is so kind. He goes out of his way to talk to us. If there are ever times that—so we forecast independently, and then we come together at the end of the day and make a joint decision, so that way, no one has bias on one forecast or the other. And he’s been so great with communication. He is very encouraging. I have really enjoyed getting to work with him. 

 

Gracie: You’re waking up at 2 am, 5 days a week. What keeps you energized?

 

Grace: Nothing and everything at the same time. I have really great people here that I work with, and that makes it exciting to wake up, but also just the passion of what I get to do. When I was in high school, I shadowed it at the Weather Channel, and I shadowed Kelly Cast. She was outstanding, and I was 17 at the time, so it’s kind of a bold question for her to ask me, but they have great facilities there in Atlanta. In the studio we were in at the time, it had two French glass doors, and she put her hands on the handles of the doors, and before she opened it, she turned back and looked at me and said, “Are you sure this is what you want to do with your life?” And I thought, ‘I don’t know. I’m 17. Maybe it’s what I want to try this week’. And she said, “Well, I ask you that because what happens behind these doors in this studio is so exciting and so fast-paced, and so unlike any other career out there, once you see this, this is all that’s going to be enough. So if there’s something else you want to try first and come back, go do that.” And I said, “No, I think I really want to try this, especially after hearing that.” And like a movie, she had her hands on the doors and she slid open the French doors and there were the camera lights, the studio, and they were all—the camera men in there with their headsets on and it was like walking into Narnia, I was  like, ‘What is this?’ And then of course, I sat there and it was everything she said it was going to be. It was fast paced; it was exciting. She had a great personality on AMHQ Mornings. At the time, it just made it all so intriguing and exciting and I was like, ‘I have to do this’ and so here I am. So, everyday that alarm goes off, I am like, ‘You are kidding me but I am also like, ‘Look at what I get to do.’

 

Gracie: So chemistry was not your strong suit. You loved physics. I feel like that is rare for a woman to love physics and I would love to change that narrative. Tell me how that ties into Gracie’s Girls Club and the STEM work you do there. 

 

Grace: In so many ways, more ways than none. So Gracie’s Girls Club is just about to have its 30th episode that airs where I just highlight local women in STEM. A lot of them, not directly physicists but involved in physics which to me is just a hard core science to which I am like, ‘Oh good for us.’ I feel like it’s so cool. It’s a very physical science. We see rockets explode and move into space. And so the women that I’m interviewing in Grace’s Girls Club, whether their passion is physics or chemistry or psychology or engineering or whatever it might be, they feel that same way about whatever their trade is. So I kind of took my interest in something that’s a little more niche, and thought, ‘Okay, well, I can’t be the only one like this. Let’s talk to the people who also feel the same way.’ You should see the Gracie’s Girls Club interviews. The full ones are posted on our website, but we just sit there and nerd out together like, ‘Oh my gosh, do you remember when we were taking differential equations in college’, and they are like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes and organic chemistry with…’ We just have these great conversations because we kind of existed in this old little niche world, but we all went through it together, and it’s been amazing. I’ve had people that are—I’ve had one group that’s still in high school, several others that are right out of college, several others that are getting ready to retire and we all talk about our science and our trade, and we celebrate that we did it, that other girls can do it, and younger girls can do it. And the hub that we live in where people elevate this, and they say, ‘You are so smart, you are so accomplished and capable, let’s share that with everybody and really support you. The backing in the community has been unbelievable, and the diversity in the community—never did I expect so many large companies to have their board of directors or their C suite, so many of them female, and every one of them just feels stronger and more educated than the next and that’s been outstanding to be a part of. 

 

Gracie: I’m just looking forward to being in a community that fits that way, it is so rare, especially in the South and it’s so exciting to have that kind of science-based community here, especially with women being so involved in it. I get very excited about that.

 

Grace: It absolutely is and I do love that too. I did just see the time though. I have to start getting ready for the show, do you want to walk and talk?

 

Gracie: Walk and talk 

 

Grace: Welcome to my office

 

Gracie: Thank you

 

Grace: So this is my green screen and then these are the cameras. So everyone always asks, “Do you have a teleprompter?” No, the anchors do, the reporters do but meterologists do not. Our camera is actually a mirror so where the teleprompter would be is a mirror and that’s how we see where we are pointing. Now, either side of us are conference monitors so the thing is, when you are on TV and you just turn to the side so you face forward and you put your right leg behind you and then you with your hip and that kind of makes the illusion of your body turning, even though really technically, you’re still at an angle, and then you turn your chin towards the green screen, but you leave the top of your head where it is, so that way you can look at the monitor with your eyes, but it looks like you’re looking back here, so you’re not just standing straight looking at it. It kind of creates an illusion. We kind of play a lot with our distances. So like on this map, if I wanted to point to 6am, that’s too far from my arm, so you take a step forward and then a slight point, and it puts you right there. And that’s kind of a little bit of green screen magic. So you can do Barbie hands. That’s this one. I do a lot of two-finger pointing, especially if I’m circling something, like a tornado; you can just point to something regular, and then sometimes I flip flop. People always say I have princess hands, which is never planned. I guess that’s just a personality trait.

 

Gracie: Hey Disney Princess, the weather Disney Princess.

 

Grace: I can be one of those Disney—

 

Gracie: Oh, let’s see it. 

 

Grace: Hi, I’m Grace Anello and you’re watching WAAY TV. 

 

Gracie: Oh, that’s awesome. So let’s finish off the rest of our episode interview. So we have a couple questions we want to ask Grace; they are a little bit more personal, and then we’re going to go into some rapid fire questions. We are going to see how competitive she is and how fast she can think on her feet, which we know is fast. First, though, I did say this at some point, and I thought it was very interesting. You said that after a long day, you get very tired of your own voice. So when you get home and you decompress, what does that go-to self-care routine look like? 

 

Grace: Soothing tea, we talk so much that it’s my absolute go to; otherwise, people notice, and I’ll get your comments like, ‘Are you feeling okay? Your voice sounds different’, you know. But I just get tired of hearing my own voice, so I listen to anybody else. Like, I’ll listen to music, but I won’t sing the words or if I’m really tired in the car. I’ll just drive the whole way home in silence, no radio, no windows down, no nothing, just the over simulation that I get, and so sometimes, my sweet, sweet mom who I literally love more than anything in the world, calls and I text her back, “I just can’t talk to you right now; can you text me?” She said, “Sure.” 

 

Gracie: That’s a little sad, but also, good for you for learning your boundaries.

 

Grace: Flexibility, right, you want people to be flexible with you.

 

Gracie: Absolutely, I feel like, well, at least my long day, I come home and I take a long bath for hours. We have to refill the hot water several times because it’s gotten cold.

 

Grace: Naturally. So I like a salad and maybe I will watch TV for maybe half an hour, go to the gym a couple days a week. And then I take my nap and then I wake up and I just love to cook. I get so excited the second I wake up from my nap because I am ready for dinner. And then I will go do whatever that is and end the day.

 

Gracie: What is your favorite kind of food to cook?

 

Grace: So I really like to make lasagna. It was my all time favorite thing. Our family had it every Christmas Eve. It was a big deal. My mom would teach me how to make my first lasagna but it’s so heavy; it fills you up so much. So I don’t make it that often. I love to eat–I like when I make chicken piccata; that is probably my favorite thing to eat or salmon. But as far as making it, it is definitely lasagna. I feel like it brings out the Italian.

 

Gracie: I’ll say, with your roots, you have got to make some good lasagna. Okay, well, we’re going to go into these rapid fire questions. Alright, favorite time of the day?

 

Grace: 11am 

 

Gracie: Favorite genre of music

 

Grace: Country

 

Gracie: Favorite color

 

Grace: Red

 

Gracie: Favorite meal of the day

 

Grace: Dinner

 

Gracie: Favorite food at the meal

 

Grace: Salmon or chicken piccata

 

Gracie: Sweet or savoury

 

Grace: Savoury

 

Gracie: Heels or sneakers

 

Grace: Sneakers

 

Gracie: Window or aisle seat

 

Grace: Window

 

Gracie: Biggest pet peeve

 

Grace: When people go on… one or two I can handle; seven is too much for me.

 

Gracie: Guilty pleasure

 

Grace: Chocolate 

 

Gracie: Best vacation you’ve been on

 

Grace: The beach, any sand 

 

Gracie: Best advice you’ve ever received

 

Grace: Oh goodness, that is not a rapid-fire question. Hold on, let me think about it. Realize where your purpose comes from. So we are called by God to have our purpose and have our job and that is where our identity has to come from, not in our own success in that field or the friends we have and the people we associate with. Those things are important but realizing the true purpose of my joy comes from being where the Lord told me to be. That is the only thing that is the same. I have learned that the hard way. Every time that I have kind of differed a little bit, the joy has definitely gone down and it is noticeable so staying connected to the mind in that one.

 

Gracie: Thank you so much. Thank you for talking to us; it has been so fun.

 

Grace: Thank you for having me. You guys are the best. This is so fun.