How did our author/reporter Jean Marie Stanberry get the awesome assignment of interviewing Meryl Davis and Charlie White on the set of “Dancing With the Stars”?  Well it’s all about who you know and what you know.  Luckily, Jean had both.  First, she got a little bit of inside scoop from a friend who is a producer on DWTS.  She knew two days before the official announcement that Charlie and Meryl would be facing off against each other so she begin doing her homework.  The key to getting the assignment is coming up with a unique angle for your article and pitching it to the right people.  Jean has already done work for those people, so when she hit up the editors of “Skating” and “Fire on Ice” magazine with the idea that she wanted to do an article and photo shoot, how could they tell her no?  Who else could possibly bring the experience to their magazine like Jean could?

Like Meryl and Charlie, Jean has some dance experience, but for the last 20 years she has been almost exclusively doing ice choreography.  In fact, Jean is a nine time IAIC award winner.  If anyone could empathize with Meryl and Charlie’s difficulty making the transition to dancing in a ballroom over an ice rink, it would be her.

Jean was excited to spend some time with Meryl and Charlie, she has met them several times, but has never had the opportunity to work with them.  She was also excited to meet and work with Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Sharna Burgess.  You can read Jean’s articles and get the whole scoop in the April issues of “Skating” and “Fire on Ice”.