Mary Ellen Geist was raised in a family of musicians, writers, and nature-lovers in a century-old farmhouse in orchard country outside Detroit, Michigan. Her father, Woody, the CEO of an industrial distribution company, was also a jazz singer who performed for more than four decades with a 12-man a capella group called The Grunyons. Rosemary, her mother, is an artist who taught at the small school called Kingsbury Mary Ellen and her sisters, Alison and Libby, attended. Her grandfather, who started a camp on Higgin’s Lake in northern Michigan, was an expert in the trees, birds, skies, and stars, and taught her about camp craft. Her grandmother was a columnist for the Birmingham Eccentric Newspaper and authored a book about nature called Flower in the Crannied Wall, which her mother illustrated. Reading, and reading out loud from the many books that lined the shelves in the family home, was a daily routine. The family wrote and read, painted and drew and made block prints together. The other shared activity revolved around music, as the family performed as an acapella singing group at various venues in the suburbs of Detroit. Mary Ellen’s childhood passions of singing, reading, writing, drawing, and bird watching have continued throughout her life.
In high school, Mary Ellen performed in musicals and excelled in creative writing. As a teenager, she had a very short career as a waitress, and also taught waterskiing and lead nature hikes.
At Kalamazoo College, she majored in English/Creative Writing and minored in Theatre. She spent her junior year in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and won an award for the poems she wrote while in West Africa. That’s also when she first began to contemplate a career as a journalist. When she got home from Africa, however, she took a job as a singer with a jazz band in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and went on the road with the band for several years. Later she moved to Boise, Idaho, where she performed at the Idaho Public Theatre under a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the next few years, efforts to pay the rent on time included a job singing telegrams while dressed in an elephant suit and wearing rollerblades, and, in another short-lived career move, serving sandwiches from a chapatti wagon.
Her first job in broadcast journalism was as a reporter and anchor at WPZ Radio in Petoskey, Michigan. She then moved to WJML Radio in Petoskey to anchor the news; she eventually became news director. During this time, she also wrote articles for magazines, including Traverse Magazine and The Alternative in Indianapolis.
Following stints as a scriptwriter and producer at CBS/Fox Video and as assistant to the director on an independent horror film, Mary Ellen moved to Los Angeles to work for director/writer Andy Tennant at MGM/UA. After exploring the motion picture industry, she decided to return to radio. She eventually became what’s called “morning streets” reporter at KFWB in Los Angeles. After several years at KFWB, Mary Ellen moved up the coast to KGO Radio in San Francisco. She spent twelve years there as a morning reporter and anchor of the noon news, followed by a year anchoring the morning news. In 2004, she moved to New York City to be afternoon anchor at WCBS Radio.
Mary Ellen won many awards during her journalism career, including national and regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for best newscast and investigative reporting, and Associated Press Awards for best newscast, live coverage, investigative reporting, and Reporter of the Year.
In February of 2005, Mary Ellen left WCBS Radio to return home to Michigan. She has been at home, helping her mother care for her father, who has Alzheimer’s, since then. Her book, Measure of the Heart, describes her experiences with her father during these years. She divides her time between the family cabin on Walloon Lake and her parents' year-round home near Detroit.
