Friends, it’s time. It’s about time we introduce you to our Midwest neighbor. You’ve seen her in some of our favorite videos in the past two years. Every time she appears on camera we are flooded with questions and, on this week’s podcast, we answer them all.
Her name is Ann Marie Taepke, and she’s been playing our on-camera neighbor for over 2 years. No, unfortunately, she’s not our “real” neighbor. Yes, she is from the Midwest.
What you may not know, is that Ann Marie is a producer, writer, and manager of our weird family business. She’s sort of a unicorn who can write song lyrics one minute and then run a conference call like a BOSS the next. We’ve known Ann Marie for over a decade and she’s been working with us since 2014. However, she was mostly behind-the-scenes until a couple of years ago.
On this week’s podcast, we pulled back the curtain on how we met, the most annoying things about working with a married couple and you’ll get to hear the world’s longest Midwest goodbye (we seriously tried to sign off for 20 minutes but kept chatting).
We also talk about how she ended up playing this character on our little corner of the internet.
In February 2021, Ann Marie and I had two very different outlooks about a snowstorm moving into the South. I was freezing and freaking out that we would be snowed/iced in, and Ann Marie was basically walking around without a coat planning a cul-de-sac party with her neighbors.
My first thought: This is a video.
I pitched the concept, we wrote the script, shot the video over lunch, and had it edited and published by dinner. It was the Midwest Neighbor’s first appearance on the channel and it was a hit. It was clear we needed to add another title to her job description with us.
Your Stories
We put a video out yesterday about funny neighbor posts on Nextdoor that gave us a good laugh, so we wanted to hear more from you. We asked for your most heartfelt or funniest neighbor stories to share on the podcast. We read those along with our conversation with Ann Marie, including a 20-minute Midwest goodbye that plays out in real-time.
Did you have more questions for Ann Marie or a funny story to share? Listen to the show and let us know in the comments.
