Three And A Half Minutes Of Fame

We finally got our three and a half minutes of fame this week!

This is a screen grab from our television debut this week!

Being in print journalism, it feels kind of funny to be excited about being on television, but we were truly thrilled for the chance to share our story with even more people.

When we first got Grace's diagnosis, we weren't entirely sure we wanted to share our story, even in The Journal-News.  It's just a hard thing to talk about, and we weren't sure how many people we wanted to know. But, eventually, it got harder and harder to tell people on an individual basis, so Kyle wrote a column to share our news with the entire community.  And the outpouring of love and support hasn't stopped since.

Although Kyle and I had written about Grace in our columns since before she was born, she had not really been in the newspaper much outside of that.  It's sort of unwritten rule in the newspaper business not to use your own children in candid photos and things like that.  And we sort of intended to keep it that way.

However, she slowly started to creep into news items here and there for various fundraisers and events being held in her honor. We were asked the other day  how many events have been hosted for Grace, and we couldn't answer!  We guessed around 30 or so, feeling very blessed.

I would guess that Grace's picture has been in the paper around 100 times since she was diagnosed with INAD.  And she was even mentioned in one of Dave Kane's sports notes in the State Journal Register one Monday.

But until recently, we hadn't really done much outside publicity in The Journal-News, since Kyle and I happen to have lots of access there.  He did some publicity on WSMI Radio for the Grace Cup soccer game, and we were interviewed again by WSMI just last week.

As the race day got closer, I started talking with a friend and fellow J-School alum from Mizzou.  She works with public relations at the St. Louis University School of Medicine and she helped me get in contact with some of the St. Louis media.  We reached out to St. Louis, since that's where the study is being done.

After e-mailing several news outlets, I got a response from three, and we ended up being offered a spot on the Fox2News morning show this Wednesday.  We were SO excited to have the chance to share our story with thousands of viewers at once.

The producer sent me all the information, and we had to be at the studio in St. Louis at 8:15 a.m. for a live 8:40 a.m. spot.   It meant getting up WAY earlier than we are used to at our house, but it was worth it.

We arrived at the studio, and they set us up with microphones, and interviewed us right there in the lobby.  I was really nervous, especially since it was a live segment, but everything went really well.  We had a chance to talk about our Make-A-Wish trip to Hawaii, Grace's diagnosis and the research study as well as the Grace-Filled 5K this weekend.  Grace even seemed to enjoy her time there too.

For us, it was a chance to tell lots of people about INAD and how they can get involved and help.  We are so blessed to have raised so much money for the research study and hope to continue to do so.

Anyone that missed the segment, can check it out here, http://fox2now.com/2015/09/02/710204/ just so you don't miss our three and a half minutes of fame.

MLH