Alyse Eady is officially off to Atlanta, jumping from the country’s No. 57 TV news market to the No. 9 market.
At WAGA, Fox 5, she will co-anchor “Good Day Atlanta,” starting on Aug. 22. Her leap from KTHV-TV, Channel 11, is probably the biggest out of Little Rock since Jessica Dean departed KATV, Channel 7, to go to the No. 4 market, Philadelphia, in 2013.
To paraphrase Eady, you can take the Miss out of Arkansas, but not the Arkansas out of the Miss.
The Fort Smith native and Ouachita Baptist University graduate reminds friends and well-wishers that it’s a direct flight to Atlanta, and she’ll be back often.
Her heart may remain in Arkansas, but her sweethearts are going with her. Those would be her husband, Patrick Lemmond, and her Siberian husky, Ranger.
“Patrick is my college sweetheart,” said Eady, 28, Miss America runner-up before her five years as co-anchor of “THV-11 This Morning.” “Seeing him in his baseball pants won me over!”
That was a bit of a joke, but she’s seriously excited about Atlanta, where Crowe Horwath, the accounting firm Lemmond works for, has an office. Eady’s last day at KTHV was Friday. Facing the move, she fondly reflected on her Arkansas roots.
“My dad [Lewis Eady] is one of 12 kids and was raised on a farm in Marvell [Phillips County],” she wrote in an email. “My mom [Lady Eady] has eight sisters and was raised in Texarkana. They met at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, got married and moved to Fort Smith, where my dad opened a State Farm office.”
She grew up with two older brothers, Martin and Scott.
“My mom is my hero. She had a stroke at age 45 and fights every day to improve her mobility and cognitive function. I’ve never seen someone go through such adversity with such a positive attitude.”
But will Eady, whose singing ventriloquism delighted pageant crowds, perform in Atlanta? “Not if I can help it.” She said she has sung the national anthem for Razorback games and civic groups, but doesn’t often “bring out the puppets.”