Winter / Spring 2007 - University of Arkansas at Monticello

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UAM MAGAZINE 4 LOOK Getting the all it “the look.” Mark Mayo and Amanda Powell notice it at the mall, at a restaurant, anywhere someone might recognize their television personality spouses. CMelinda Mayo and Powell are married to Mayo and Steve Powell, the hosts of Good Morning, Arkansas, which airs Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. on Little Rock television station KATV. “Melinda gets recognized all the time,” says Mark. “It was kind of cool for the first week. After that, not so much. You feel like you’re being watched.” “You get used to it,” adds Amanda. “Steve is so personable and down to earth. He makes people feel at ease and doesn’t pretend to be famous.” Mark and Amanda share more than their famous spouses. They are both graduates of the University of Arkansas at Monticello who are forging successful careers in business and advertising. Mark graduated from UAM in 1986 with a degree in business administration and is now the regional sales manager for Allied Tube in Little Rock, overseeing an annual budget of $77 million for a 16-state region. Amanda is an advertising sales representative for KATV who was responsible for more than $1 million in ad sales last year. Both are proud of their UAM roots.
(Left) Mark Mayo and Amanda Powell (seated) with their spouses, Melinda Mayo (left) and Steve Powell, the hosts of “Good Morning, Arkansas.” A Pine Bluff native, Mark transferred to UAM from Southern Arkansas University to play baseball for the Boll Weevils and became a member of Phi Lambda Chi fraternity. “I wasn’t a real serious student, at least to begin with,” he says. “I lived and breathed fraternity. But I made a lot of lifelong friends.” One of the first people Mayo met in Phi Lamb was George Shahin, who unbeknownst to Mayo, was a starting guard on the UAM football team. Mayo chose Shahin as his fraternity Big Brother to see him through his year as a pledge. “My buddies told me I picked the wrong guy,” Mayo says. “I found out why pretty quick.” In the 1980’s, fraternity hazing was still a quietly accepted if unpublicized practice and being hazed by a 250-pound varsity football player was a not altogether pleasant experience. Mayo remembers his Phi Lamb days as a case of “boys will be boys.” He and some of his fraternity brothers decided to participate in Drew County Clean-up Day, with the promise of $200 for picking up the most trash from McDonald’s. “We started out looking for trash along the road but decided that was too much work,” Mayo remembers with a laugh. “So we went to McDonald’s and loaded up with trash out of their dumpster.” Mayo had what he describes as his “watershed moment” while still a few hours short of graduation. “I got the bright idea I wanted to quit school and become a lumber inspector for Price Lumber,” Mayo remembers. “Mr. Price wanted to know how many hours I needed to graduate, and when I told him, he said ‘Go back and finish school.’” Mayo spent the summer pulling boards in one of Price’s sawmills and decided finishing college was a better career option. “I made the Dean’s List the next semester and did well in class from that point on,” he says. Before she was Amanda Powell, Amanda Loveless was a 1995 graduate of Drew Central High School in Monticello. She had scholarship offers from UAM and the University of Central Arkansas, but chose UAM to stay close to her home. Amanda was Mayo’s opposite in college, all business with little time for outside activities. She worked full time in the inspection department at Burlington Industries but still managed to graduate in four years with a degree in business administration and a minor in marketing. “I was all about working,” she says. After graduation, she got a job with Applied Independent Technologies. Two years later, she answered a newspaper ad and was hired by KATV to work in advertising sales. She met her future husband at KATV in 2002 and the couple was married in October 2003. The Powells have a 14-month-old son named Charlie. Amanda credits retired UAM business professor James Cathey for being the biggest influence on her academic success. “Mr. Cathey got on our level,” she says. “He was always very helpful and friendly. I feel very fortunate to have had a lot of wonderful teachers at UAM. The faculty was very involved with their students.” Mark and Melinda Mayo graduated from Pine Bluff High School two years apart but never met until a friend introduced them on a blind date in 1993. Mark got up at five o’clock in the morning to watch Melinda on television to check out his date. “I thought, yeah, she’s cute,” he says. “I’ll go out with her.” For Mark it was love at first site and the couple married in 1995. For both Mark Mayo and Amanda Powell, UAM offered them a chance to get a college degree without moving far from their homes or getting lost in the shuffle of a large university. “I went to UAM because it was close to home and small,” says Mark. “Everybody knew everybody and I didn’t want to go someplace and get lost in a crowd.” With famous spouses, the chances of Mark and Amanda getting lost in a crowd now probably isn’t an option. (Below) Mark Mayo and Amanda Powell on the set of “Good Morning, Arkansas.” Winter / Spring 2007 5
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Page 7 and 8: Chancellor Jack Lassiter addresses
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Page 11 and 12: Alumni “We are pleased to honor t
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Page 25 and 26: A&M Memories “Doorknob” Remembe
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Winter / Spring 2007 - University of Arkansas at Monticello

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