Read more 25th anniversary stories in the March/April 2025 feature.
Kayaking in gator-filled waters? Posing as a dead body for a murder mystery photo shoot? Rumbling through a field inside a World War II Sherman tank? At Evansville Living, it’s all in a day’s work!
We say there’s never a dull day at the office, and while that statement often is accompanied by a laugh, it truly is no joke. Part of putting together a city magazine is exploring parts unknown and getting behind-the-scenes glimpses at the people, places, and things that shape our community.
For the sake of the job, Evansville Living staff have gotten to zip around on Segways when they were relatively new. Adventurous employees have gone to new heights by trying aerial yoga at the YMCA of Southwestern Indiana and rappelling down CenterPoint Energy’s nine-story Evansville headquarters for Over The Edge 4 Granted. We’ve wrapped ourselves in seaweed, sailed on the USS LST-325, and instructed Teddy the therapy pig, perfectly posed like the pro he is, to tilt his head slightly and say “cheese!” at a photo shoot.
While in Los Angeles, California, in December 2006 to interview “Smallville” actor and Newburgh native Michael Rosenbaum, Publisher & Editor Kristen Tucker scored an invite to late actress Carrie Fisher’s star-studded birthday party, where Rosenbaum and film director George Lucas brought out her cake. A few months later, Deaconess Henderson Hospital CEO Linda White got the fright of her life when she stumbled upon a murder victim, bloody knife in back, during a murder mystery photo shoot at the Reitz Home Museum in 2007. (Todd Tucker gamely posed as the “dead millionaire with no socks.”)
There was the time Evansville Living visited John Hull’s ranch in Mexican Yucatan in 2009. The 88-year-old former CIA operative spoke candidly of his time in a Costa Rican prison decades earlier and the investigation into his alleged involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. “We’re so pleased you’re coming,” Hull told Kristen Tucker during a pre-visit call. “We’ll try not to get you kidnapped.”
The work hasn’t always been fun. In late 2005, Evansville Living staff boarded a Traylor Bros. jet bound for New Orleans, Louisiana, and — clad in steel-toed boots — surveyed the submerged, post-Hurricane Katrina city from above and below bridges. Two months later, a Life Flight gave us a bird’s-eye view of the devastation wrought on Evansville and Newburgh by an F3 tornado.
As a bi-monthly publication, we often plan far in advance. In December 1999, three months before the inaugural issue of Evansville Living hit newsstands, Creative Director Laura Mathis and photographer Fred Reaves approached a dozen homeowners asking to photograph their houses’ front exteriors for the “12 Doors of Christmas” feature … for publication in a year. Imagine knocking on someone’s door and telling them you want to feature their home in a magazine that does not yet exist! We still marvel — and appreciate — how supportive people were in the magazine’s early days.
