Alex and Kelsey take New York

by Barbara Wiedemann

“Go find Kelsey!”

Ohio native Alex Walkowski’s friend Erin Bissette ’16 forwarded the rising UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media junior a tweet from fellow J-school undergraduate Kelsey Weekman wherein she announced to the world (or her followers, anyway: 10.1K and counting, at this point) that she was in NYC for her 2015 summer internship at Mashable.

If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere

Walkowski, real estate license in hand, had cold-called his way into a summer internship in the Big Apple in exchange for a subway pass and weekday lunches. He was living in a warehouse in the Bronx, under a stairway (If you can make it there, etc.). He was looking for a friendly face.

It was her second day in New York City. Kelsey Weekman’s dad was still in town from Raleigh, North Carolina, helping her get settled in. They were taking in Central Park. She invited Walkowski to join them.

“We’re here,” she texted him, adding a handy photo of the nearby skyline as a reference.

He stumbled around the park for a good long while, holding his phone up to the sky in search of a matching view.

“I didn’t realize how big the park was, and I didn’t have the right technology,” he says now with a laugh. But he didn’t give up. Eventually, he found the pair of North Carolinians in the park.

Kelsey says, looking back: “He spent the day hanging out with me and my Dad!” She sounds surprised. He’s sitting next to her on the couch. He looks smitten.

Let’s go back, let’s go back, let’s go way on way back when

They met in “English 105: English Composition and Rhetoric” as first year students at Carolina — “corner room, fifth floor of Greenlaw,” Alex recalls — and connected on social media.

“You were so funny on Twitter, Alex!” says Kelsey.

They met again as UNC Hussman students in “MEJO 137: Introduction to Advertising and Public Relations.” And crossed paths as fellow DTHers (that’s The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at Carolina).

But the sparks didn’t fly until that summer. They started socializing with the same crowd in New York, saw each other every couple of days.

“He was so easy to talk to,” Kelsey says. “He cared a lot about my job. He asked me a lot of questions.”

Suddenly, they were dating. Seriously.

The narrative arc requires a challenge: and so, off Alex went to Oslo for a fall internship abroad.

“I was so sad,” says Kelsey. “I was so jealous. I was working at the DTH 12 hours a day, missing my boyfriend, missing New York City.”

Happily, he returned from Norway to Chapel Hill.

“I ended up spending all of my free time post-DTH-dayshift — on the business side —with her at the newspaper offices on her night shift on the editorial side,” he remembers.

He made her laugh. She made him smile.

Together, they made their way through the rigorous Carolina media and journalism undergraduate program, graduating together in 2016 to the wise words of UNC Hussman commencement speaker Cokie Roberts.

It didn’t surprise anyone when they decided to get married a year later, surrounded by Carolina classmates from maid of honor Alice Wilder ’17 to friends like Langston Taylor ’17, Stephanie Lamm ’17, Drew Goins ’16, Alison Krug ’17, Mary Tyler March ’16 and Paige Ladisic ’16.

Goins says “Had Kelsey written into the advice column we co-authored for the DTH, I would have told her Alex was without a doubt ‘the one.’ (She would have then told herself to ‘take him on a date to the eldritch wood surrounding Gimghoul Castle,’ so it’s all well and good we rarely heeded our own counsel.) They were the yin to the other’s yang, the HEEEEEEEELS to their TAAAAAAAAR.”

For Kelsey Weekman Walkowski, it was a familiar storyline. Her parents, Norma B. Weekman ’86, ’88 (M.A.) and Jimmy Weekman ’87, met at Carolina, where they were studying English and science teaching respectively. Their stories, she says, are filled with Carolina memories — from meeting at Wilson Library, to hanging out together at FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes).

Wherever I go, you bring me home

Now, nearly five years later, Alex and Kelsey live in Fort Greene in Brooklyn, in a cozy apartment with their dog, Pumpkin.

She just celebrated the publication of her first story as the new internet culture reporter for BuzzFeed News, the hard news side of the more quirky, click-y BuzzFeed.

“It’s about how Instagram is launching avatars that you can build,” she says. “Some people think it’s outdated. I think it’s awesome, and I explored why.”

And she’ll keep up OK Zoomer, her irresistible substack-based newsletter. Why?

“Because I’m bursting with ideas! When I have one, I can’t rest until it gets out.”

He just started at Albert, the financial app founded in 2015 offering a combination of banking and investment products. As senior marketing manager, he will oversee paid social channels for the startup. That includes Facebook and Instagram; also TikTok, Snapchat and Reddit. His comfort zone is all of the technical elements of media buying. It’s a topic he’d love to come back and talk with UNC Hussman students about someday: the intricacies of digital media buying.

They wrap up the conversation noting that they and all their friends are doing things in the media space that didn’t exist as a class back in their days as undergraduates. It underscores the challenge of preparing graduates for incredibly fast-moving fields like media. Indeed, the school constantly seeks to prepare students for a future yet to be invented, with nimble graduates who find themselves more capable of excelling in their careers than they may have thought possible.

In fact, even Kelsey was convinced she didn’t have what it takes to be a journalist earlier in her career — but lo and behold, “We’ve been equipped with all the things we need.”

Parting thought from Kelsey: “The fact that the J-school makes you take news writing no matter what your area of interest is … [makes the chef’s kiss gesture].”

Happy Valentine’s Day, Kelsey and Alex.