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| Two Saucy Spirited Women |
SPIRITED WOMAN Q & A
THE SAUCY SISTERS, aka Barbara Nowak and Beverly Wichman
I met Barbara Nowak over twenty years ago in L.A. At
the time I had my own public relations business and she became one of my clients. I immediately loved her. Fun, a spark plug if you will - I knew Barbara, who at the time was in the corporate world - was destined for great things - in what, I don't think either of us had a clue. I just knew that Barbara had big dreams and that she would achieve them. When she introduced me to her equally fun-loving sister Beverly (Bev) Wichman, who was also in the corporate world, I knew that someday those two would set the world on fire. Or at least light it up.
Well, I must have been psychic. Now here's the story. For over ten years, I completely lost touch with Barbara and Bev. I didn't know what they were up to, where they lived, what they were doing - nothing! But, one day in December of last year, when I was looking for representation, I ran across their names on an agent's web site. Oh my God, I said to myself. There's Barbara's name. There's Bev's. They've written a book, "The Saucy Sisters' Guide to Wine."
Wow, they've done all these things. I've got to find them. So, I called the agent cold and told her the story. She said, "Get me your card, I'm having dinner with them in New York next week."
And that is how we reconnected. Through an agent, a web-site, a tearful phone call, and a bit of luck. In 1993, Barbara and Bev had moved to Nashville. Bev wanted a change from L.A. and Barbara's husband Paul, the lawyer, was having a mid-life crisis and wanted to write country western songs instead of lawsuits - Barbara went along for the ride. Once in Nashville, Barbara and Bev's life took off in a whole new direction (what an understatement!). In 1996, they coined themselves "The Saucy Sisters" and from that inspired moment came books, the "Eat, Drink, and Be Saucy" radio show which ran from 1996-2001, television appearances, newspaper columns, and local celebrity hood.
Bev now lives in Philadelphia, nearer to their ailing mom. Barbara still resides in Nashville. Her husband is back in law. In March 2004, I am sure their lives will change again. "The Saucy Sisters' Guide to Wine" will appear in bookstores everywhere, and they are planning to go on a cross country promotional tour in something akin to a "grapemobile." Okay, it will probably be a purple RV. I will be seeing Barbara in a few weeks in Nashville, where she has forced me to come (just kidding) to do a workshop. I can't wait.
Call them siblings for life, restaurant reviewers, radio personalities, frequent dining partners, wine enthusiasts, food enthusiasts, restaurant enthusiasts... Barbara and Bev have done it their own way. Filled with spirit. Read on.
Q: How did you come up with the name Saucy Sisters?
A. Bev - That’s probably me. It evolved around an event Barbara was doing. Barbara had been involved for many years with the local PBS stations – either
hosting their pledge drives or participating in some of their cooking segments. We had recently moved to Nashville and they asked her to participate in a
cooking segment for their pledge drive. It was called "P is for Pasta," etc. Barbara said, "I’d love to do it. If it is okay, why doesn’t my sister join me?" They said yes. So we had to come up with a pasta recipe, and I was just driving one day thinking about the sauce and I’m wondering if we're saucy. I wasn’t really sure if that was good or bad, so I called Barbara up as soon as I got to a phone and I asked her, Are we saucy? And she said, "Well, of course." So I said, Good, what about calling us "The Saucy Sisters" and this is "The Saucy Sisters’ Bow Tied Pasta"?
A: Barbara - That was the beginning of The Saucy Sisters and it stuck. When we decided to go after doing a radio show we thought, we have to have a name and, of course, The Saucy Sisters is just so catchy, and that’s what we were going to be talking about food, restaurants, wine and so on so The Saucy Sisters was it.
Q: When you were on the show did The Saucy Sisters immediately get a response?
A: Bev - Oh my gosh, what was so interesting, here we were, novices in Nashville. Barbara was wanting to break into TV and I said, You know, you need a sidekick. I’m a real radio junkie and when we moved to Nashville from L.A., Nashville was just barren as far as any great radio shows and I said, Why don’t we pitch a radio show? Barbara researched how to do that and sent off the letter to several stations locally and immediately got a response. They no sooner
received the letter when they said they wanted to meet. I think the name and the concept were both, number one, catchy and, number two, timely.
A: Barbara - What happened was we went in for this radio interview with the owners of the station to pitch our show. After about half an hour they said, "So when can you start?"
A: Bev - I said, Would you like a demo or something? And of course we didn’t have one and I wouldn’t have known what to give them. And they said "Oh no, we just like the way you interact."
A: Barbara - We immediately went to the bar downstairs from their offices and we said, Oh well, what do we do now?
A: Bev - Here we have a radio show and we didn’t have a clue what to do.
Q: From the radio show is that how you ended up getting the TV appearances and things along those lines?
A: Barbara - Yeah. We started becoming known around town as being connected with food and wine, and this was even before our book (Best Places to Eat in Nashville), and we thought we just needed to branch out we are such hams. There was one show in particular, The Talk of the Town," and every woman in Nashville knows it, so we pitched them about doing just one segment on restaurants. We did it differently than people were probably expecting. We got different kinds of food from different restaurants, but we did it in a theme – and the first one was so much fun, and they had so much fun, they said can you come back again? So when we did, we said we are going to take this a little farther. We’re not going to just bring the food and talk about it. We’re going to come dressed as our theme.
A: Bev - So we decided to come as Germans since it was around the Octoberfest, and Nashville is fairly conservative anyway and this TV show is very
conservative, so we were a little over the top. We showed up in our little dirndls and with these huge liter mugs of beers and a fabulous array of German food they were speechless.
A: Barbara - I think they thought we tanked up before we started. We really hadn’t.
A: Bev - We became regulars. They actually got to like it because they just never quite knew what we were going to come as.
A: Barbara - They always knew our theme but they never quite knew how we were going to be dressed. They would place bets before we arrived.
A: Bev - One of the funniest ones was Valentine’s Day. We really weren’t sure what to do, so we showed up in our respective wedding dresses.
A: Barbara - One Christmas time we came dressed as boxes.
Q: What is it like to work together as sisters -- the good, the bad, the ugly?
A: Barbara - Bev, you can start with the ugly. Well, I don’t know about the bad and ugly part because even in the bad - I guess we have had occasion to argue over business things - but we are so close we get over it. That is the good part. We think along the same lines so in terms of business related issues
that come up we pretty much can handle it. I don’t know what do you think, Bev?
A: Bev - Oh gosh, to me there is nothing bad, it is all a plus. It is like the best thing that has happened to me in my life. I mean, Barbara stimulates my mind. I’ve been in human resources, in the business world for so long, it gets somewhat tedious and I didn’t realize I had all this energy and creativity in me. Just working with her brings it all out and it allows me to be sort of wild and crazy in my thoughts. Barbara is not only entrepreneurial but also thinks "Let’s just do it. The worst that could happen is that people will say no.” Actually, I was worried about the radio show because we were so close and I’d heard many stories of family members working together and ruining the
relationship, but it has only strengthened it.
A: Barbara - It may sound a little strange but Bev constantly surprises me. She just makes me laugh so much. Bev is a pretty mild-mannered, soft-spoken
kind of person, but she'll come up with stuff and I'm just rolling on the floor. She'll just come out with outrageous things and I think, I wish I had thought
of that. It brings me lots of joy to be able to work with her.
Q: How did you get involved with food and wine?
A: Barbara - Well, it was probably the one thing we could do well. From my perspective, I had always been interested in food and I remember when I
graduated from college telling everybody what I really wanted to do not that I pursued it it was to travel around the world and write for a gourmet magazine. Then years later when we were in California, I had this book in mind to do, and that was my first book, "Cook it Right." I was still in the corporate world, but
when I left it, I knew that this is what I was going to do. I loved it and that was really my first foray into something about food. Obviously I enjoy cooking, but I later found out writing about food was my talent. My book came out shortly after we moved to Nashville and then I pitched The Tennessean, our local
paper, to do a column on food and restaurants. The editor happened to like the way I approached it and the way I wrote. The column ran for several years. I
also had a home-style column.
A: Bev - It is so different from Barbara, even though I kind of ride on her coat tails. I do have a couple of things to say regarding that. Of course our parents are fabulous cooks. We grew up in a household where at a young age they experimented with all different types of cuisines. We also lived in New
Jersey not too far from New York City where we went out to eat a lot, so we were exposed to different kinds of foods in restaurants. At a very early age I got an
appreciation for cooking and eating and dining and for wine. So we always had that love. But another interesting thing that happened was when I was living
in Los Angeles, I just fell in love with this radio show, "The Paul Wallach Show." And ultimately, I also had a crush on Paul Wallach, I went to an event where he was there raffling off a dinner and I was determined to be the winning person on that, which I was. We ended up going out to dinner. We actually became really good friends, even ended up dating. I was on his radio show after I had run the L.A. marathon. I learned some of the insides and outs of how he worked. He was also a very well known restaurant writer in Los Angeles. He sort of was my mentor. At the time I didn’t dream of doing it myself. But it all came in very handy when we ultimately did get our radio show.
Q: You’ve really parlayed the concept of The Saucy Sisters. How did you do it?
A: Bev - We were also in the right place at the right time when we moved to Nashville. I think we could have done this in any market but it would have been
a lot tougher. Nashville was just ripe for something like this. First of all, the radio just stunk and talk radio there was in its infancy and interview shows were practically nonexistent unless they were on country music.
A: Barbara - At the same time, the food industry here in Nashville was just beginning to take off. It had been a wasteland in years prior. There were new
restaurants moving in, some hot chefs from New York and L.A. Certainly, the timing couldn’t have been better and the environment. How we got it done, because we did not have contacts, was a determination and the feeling that we’re just going to blaze a trail and try it. The worst thing that can happen is that somebody will say no or we will fail. God knows we failed at other things before so it is not the end if something doesn’t work out the way you planned. But miraculously because of the timing the actions we took really paid off. Part of it, like any other business, is networking and I guess knowing who the players are and seeing what you can do to meet them and talk to them. We just persevered.
A: Bev - I know regarding our book "Best Places to Eat in Nashville" there was no restaurant guide, and Barbara and I just looked at each other one day and
said we have to do it. Here we were off writing a book and I will never forget it. We were closing in on finishing it, I think close to pulling an all nighter, and I said to her, I can’t believe we’re writing a book. Of course, Barbara had already done one, but it was such a wonderful experience.
Q: What advice would you give someone to create a niche, or a name for themselves, with the media?
A: Bev - I would say try and do something a little different, do not try to copy anyone out there. The thing that initially worked for Barbara and me was
the sister thing. I knew Barbara was trying to get into the media and preferably television. She's a beautiful woman but she is another pretty face, so she needed a side kick, something to differentiate herself. And I could sort of tag along to at least get her noticed. But what’s so funny over the years since ’96 you see many sister and brother acts. I would suggest somehow differentiating yourselves from what is the norm because the norm today is not going to be what it is tomorrow.
Q: Barbara, why do you feel you are a spirited woman?
A: Barbara - I have enthusiasm for life and I found out that when things aren’t going the way I want them and I feel myself getting into a depression, I make believe that I am really happy, and I talk to other people like I am really happy, and it turns out that I become really happy. Even when I start out a day and I’m feeling like crap, and I'm talking to somebody but I am pretending that I’m spunky and I’m enthusiast and I’m having fun, it’s amazing what happens on the other end of a conversation. People just mirror back the enthusiasm and it is just a contagious thing.
Q: Bev, why do you feel you are a spirited woman?
A: Bev - Mine is pretty much the same thing. I love, love challenges even in the tough times. I say, it is a challenge and it is something I will get through and
I have gotten through tough times as everyone has. I look back and say wow, I am all the better for it. I just love the challenge of life, I love the good, the bad. I understand it and know it is there and I know I have grown from it. And regarding the happiness, I start everyday saying it is a new day. It is just a goal. I am not going to get out of bed unhappy no matter what problems or troubles or difficulties I might be facing. I say it is a new day and, just like Barbara, I end up happy. I will go to work and greet people with a smile
and when some type of acknowledgment or cheer is returned it gives me all the joy in the world.
THANK YOU, BARBARA & BEV. SAUCY SISTER POWER FOREVER!
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