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Posted: Monday, 31 March 2008 6:47PM
Grandma made the papers!
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 A local celebrity: Jurgenson finds fame on the radio
Ashley Martin The Dickinson Press
Published Sunday, March 30, 2008
DICKINSON - Dickinson’s Mary Jurgenson never dreamed she would ever be famous, but she has become a kind of celebrity thousands of miles away.
Jurgenson’s granddaughter, Amy Jacobs, and her co-host, Bill Pesso, feature Jurgenson via telephone every Monday on their radio show called The Coast Morning Show with Bill and Amy, which is located in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
“It’s gotten a lot bigger than I expected,” Jurgenson said.
Pesso and Jacobs simply call Jurgenson during the show, talk to her for a few minutes and get a recipe from her.
“We don’t put the recipe actually on the air, they have to go to the Web site,” Jurgenson. “We talk about it but we don’t actually give the ingredients.”
Although Jacobs and Pesso never know for sure what recipe Jurgenson is going to use, Jacobs recognizes many of them.
“She picks a lot of family recipes, like things she’s made for me over the years,” Jacobs said.
Jurgenson says although she has shared numerous recipes, she has many more her listeners haven’t heard.
“I have tons of recipes,” Jurgenson said. “I’m not a famous cook or baker, but I enjoy doing it.”
Although Jurgenson tries to play down her popularity, Pesso and Jacobs say she is a huge hit in the San Luis Obispo area.
“They like her here. I mean she’s a big star,” Pesso said. “Every time we’re out somewhere they say ‘We love Grandma!’”
“Honestly, it’s something everybody everywhere we go talks about,” Jacobs added. “We tease her saying they’re going to have her do the show instead of us.”
Jurgenson is only on the air for a brief period of time, but she is the show’s most popular feature.
“We talk to my grandma for I would say less than 10 minutes one day a week. And you have to understand we’re on the air for five hours a day Monday through Friday and in that 10 minutes, people go crazy for her,” Jacobs said.
The conversations among the three of them are not planned and are casual, everyday chitchat that one would expect of a phone call among relatives or friends.
“We’ll ask her questions about her past, or what she used to do for certain holidays, and you know, just different things,” Pesso said.
“I usually mention a lot of things about North Dakota, like the weather,” Jurgenson said.
Pesso loves to talk baseball with Jurgenson because she knows a lot about the sport. Fans can’t get enough of Jurgenson, no matter what she talks about.
“They enjoy my recipes and like listening to us talk,” Jurgenson said. “We always seem to find plenty to talk about.”
Devoted listeners send fan mail to The Coast radio station for Jurgenson. Jacobs sifts through all of the letters, e-mails and faxes and shares them with Jurgenson, who is relieved the messages are not sent to her directly.
“She (Jacobs) sent me a whole pack of letters that were sent to the station for me and I was just kind of shocked,” Jurgenson said.
A retirement home in St. Luis Obispo even sent the radio station photos of residents using Jurgenson’s recipes.
“Once a week, they get together and they make her recipes,” Jacobs said.
Since Jurgenson lives so far away from her listeners, it is hard for her to grasp the immense popularity of her little 10-minute phone call.
“Honestly I don’t think she believes me,” Amy said. “I really don’t think she understands how popular she is.”
It is hard to estimate how many people listen to Jurgenson every week, but Pesso and Jacobs have one of the top-rated shows in the area and their signal reaches a population of roughly 400,000 people. The station’s Web site also has audio clips of Jurgenson on the air and posts her recipes every week.
The craze over Jurgenson began about a year and a half ago with a contest that St. Benedict’s Health Center of Dickinson put on.
“We have assisted living week every year. One year we brought a recipe of something that we liked and everybody tasted it, and then we decided who had the best recipe,” Jurgenson said.
Jurgenson did not win the contest, which seemed unbelievable to Jacobs.
“It was funny because my grandma is a very, very good cook,” Jacobs said. “It sounded to me like maybe there was a ‘fix’.”
Jacobs told Pesso the story and they decided they would try to talk Jurgenson into sharing some of her recipes with their audience.
“I’m still wondering how she talked me into it,” Jurgenson said.
Jacobs doesn’t think Jurgenson believed she was on the radio when they first put her on the air.
“I think she kind of knew, but wasn’t 100 percent sure she was actually on the air,” Jacobs said.
Jurgenson, who is a bit shy, simply answered her phone and talked to her granddaughter and Pesso, who were broadcasting her voice across California.
“I didn’t even think too much about it to start with, so I guess that’s why I didn’t get nervous, which is truly unusual,” Jurgenson said. “I don’t mind doing it, but I didn’t think it was going to be sent out across this big of an area to this many people.”
Jurgenson said she tries not to think about the fact she has an audience. She just tries to have a normal conversation. She hasn’t heard herself on the air very many times.
“My daughter played it for me over the telephone, so I have heard it a few times,” Jurgenson said. “I think it is better if I don’t hear it.”
Although Pesso and Jacobs have invited Jurgenson to visit The Coast radio station, she is not interested.
“I think the beauty of this is that when she’s on the telephone with us, it’s not as intimidating to her as if she were here with a big microphone in her face,” Jacobs said. “In my grandma’s mind, she’s just talking to Bill and I.”
The telephone conversation is aired Monday morning, but Pesso and Jacobs usually call Jurgenson a few days prior and record the conversation.
“Usually we do it Friday morning at about 11:15 or so, but sometimes she can’t be there or Bill can’t be there,” Jurgenson said.
When Pesso and Jacobs are unable to call on Friday, they talk to Jurgenson on Monday and broadcast the conversation live.
“We don’t do it live real often, but if they have to we’ll do it,” Jurgenson said. “I’d rather not do it that way.”
Jacobs said they usually record the conversation before it airs because it is more convenient for Jurgenson and makes her more comfortable.
“She gets a little nervous when she’s live, but I think she’s better live,” Jacobs said.
It is hard to put a finger on how a conversation lasting only minutes could be so popular, but Jacobs and Pesso insist it is all in Jurgenson’s personality.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s just the nice Midwestern sort of feel grandma has, or maybe it’s the fact that everyone sort of wishes they had a grandma sort of like that,” Amy said.
Jurgenson displays the kind of charm that only a grandmother can, but she also has a sense of humor.
“She’s got a little sarcastic wit about her, you know, that is so funny,” Pesso said. “She makes us laugh every Monday.”
Jurgenson’s fans were in a panic one morning when Jacobs experienced technical difficulty while loading Jurgenson’s recipe onto The Coast’s Web site. Within minutes, worried fans were contacting the station.
“It took me like 15 minutes to get it up because I was having trouble and I already had two e-mails,” Jacobs said.
In November 2007, Pesso and Jacobs put all of the recipes Jurgenson had shared into a little book and sold them for $20 each. They raised $5,000 for the Food Bank Coalition of St. Luis Obispo County.
“I think we sold 150 of them and a lot of people overpaid for them because it was for charity,” Jacobs said.
Pesso and Jacobs plan to duplicate the fundraiser in the future.
“We’re going to make an even bigger book for next year,” Pesso said.
Jacobs said her favorite recipe is her grandma’s tator-tot hot dish, but Jurgenson questions the quality of Jacob’s cooking skills.
“She’s not a cook, I’ll guarantee you that,” Jurgenson said.
Banana bread and broccoli cauliflower salad are Jurgenson’s favorite recipes.
“I think quite a few (people) use the banana bread,” Jurgenson said. “That was one of the first ones I put out there.”
Although she doesn’t cook as much as she used to, she still bakes banana bread and chocolate chip cookies.
“I have more sweets than anything,” Jurgenson said.
Jurgenson intends to continue sharing her recipes with her fans for as long Jacobs needs her to.
“I don’t think she’ll let me get out of it,” Jurgenson joked.
Jacobs and Pesso said they have no intention on canceling Jurgenson’s segment any time soon, and intend to keep calling her for as long as Jurgenson lets them. |
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