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Austin American Statesman Article
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| Photo credit; Ricardo B. Braziell |
Hunter and Meredith Ellis a curiously matched pair
Different styles don’t disrupt this Austin couple’s yen for adventure
Posted: 12:00 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014
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By Michael Barnes - American-Statesman Staff
Hunter and Meredith Ellis crave the wider world. The Travis Heights couple manifest their global curiosity, however, in strikingly dissimilar ways.
Bolt upright and beaming, KEYE morning news anchor Hunter Ellis is a former fighter pilot and flight instructor who made his media start competing on the “Survivor” reality show, then starred in a progression of cable TV adventure series, all without blinking an eye.
More reticent and judicious — yet covertly droll — interior designer Meredith Ellis climbed the sky-high worlds of New York, Los Angeles and Dallas design. Along the way, she devoured the social and cultural novelties that those cities offered.
The Austin pair now anchor their domestic life with two small children on a large corner lot — a former garden nursery — that fits around their stout-hearted Craftsman bungalow, decorated with bits of their histories.
“I’m not going to do something crazy like Hunter,” Meredith Ellis says. “Yet we respect each other’s ways. We are adventurous together.”
“We interact with people similarly,” Hunter Ellis says. “We both love new experiences, food, culture. I might want to go surfing, skiing or mountain climbing, while she immerses herself in the culture.”
The design path
Meredith Lee Thomas Ellis, 40, was born in Dallas and grew up in the Hill Country town of Comfort. Her father, James “Jim” Thomas, dealt in real estate. Her mother, Barbara Stone Thomas, originally from the Arlington Heights area of Fort Worth, designed interiors.
An independent middle child, Meredith Ellis rode horses and scored at tennis. “I would play outside,” she says. “If I could also wear a dress.”
At the small schools in Comfort, she made friends easily, competed in sports, tried everything. Then her family moved to Boulder, Colo., during her junior year.
“Boulder changed everything,” she says. “Our high school class was as as big as my town. It made me want to get out, to travel, to live. I saw that there was more out there.”
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She studied fine arts and then art history at the University of Kansas, then at the University of Colorado, with time abroad in Florence, Italy. After college, she spent six months exploring Europe before trying out city life, first in San Francisco, then New York and Los Angeles.
“I tend to pick good cities to live in,” Meredith Ellis says. “I’m a big-city person.”
She was walking to a subway station at Union Square in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The first plane went right over my head,” she says. “It was so low, I ducked. By the time I got to the end of the block, you could see the towers and the fire. I hopped into a cab, called Mom and Dad. Within a few minutes, the news broke: It’s terrorism. I went uptown to my work, then we walked 30 blocks to my boss’s house, and 75 blocks home that night.”
Her New York boss and mentor was Bunny Williams, a celebrated residential interior designer.
“I tried to stay away from interior design,” Meredith Ellis says. “Because that’s what my mother did. I knew it wasn’t easy and not glamorous!”
To start, Williams’ stable of designers needed a shopper, and Meredith Ellis liked to shop.
“I was a little intimidated at first,” she recalls. “The clients were multibillionaires. I’d go to the showrooms and shop for accessories. That’s how I learned the vendors and my way around New York City.”
She ran the firm’s inventory, then served as coordinator for the senior designers.
“Bunny took the time to really teach us,” Meredith Ellis remembers. “When you hang the art, you want the birds looking that way, not this way. It was tough. I have the utmost respect for her.”
Two years later, she moved to a more laid-back L.A. and signed on with another top-shelf designer, Thomas Beeton. Hired to finish a job in Beverly Hills, she stayed on as senior designer. Later, she earned the same position with White House decorator Michael Smith. Now she owns Meredith Ellis Design. Among her high-profile projects is redecorating the historic Schreiner Mansion in Kerrville.
“The person who gave me the most was my mom,” Meredith says. “She let me take the reins, gave me the confidence to be a designer on my own.”
Mr. Adventure
Hunter Ellis, 46, was born in Alexandria, Va., on July 5, 1968. Twenty days later, his father, Charles “Chuck” Parish, a fighter pilot, was shot down over Vietnam. Listed as missing in action, Parish eventually was designated “killed, body not recovered.”
“I never met him,” Hunter says. “But everyone says — and I agree — I am a spitting image of him.”
His mother remarried, and Hunter took the last name of his stepfather, Admr. Robert “Bob” Ellis, also a Naval flight officer, now a retired rear admiral. His mother loved flying, too, and returned to a career as a flight attendant as soon as Hunter entered college.
Outgoing and unafraid as a child, Hunter Ellis’ proclivities pleased his mother.
“When I was 2, I was jumping off the high dive,” he smiles. “Mom said I was fun because I’d do anything she’d ask me to do. It’s pretty much that way today.”
Like many military families, the Ellis brood moved around a lot.
“Moving molded my character,” Hunter Ellis says. “When it comes to sports and classes, you learn to adapt pretty quickly. Be outgoing and positive. I loved the newness, the spirit of adventure.”
He was commissioned as a Navy ensign as soon as he graduated from the University of Southern California in political science.
Stationed at Miramar in San Diego, he rode in the back seat during Aggressor Squadron missions.
“The guys would let me fly back, fly formation and even land,” Hunter Ellis says. “All this before flight school.”
Training in Pensacola, Fla., Corpus Christi and Kingsville eventually led him to a few expeditions to Austin for fun.
Hunter served two tours of duty patrolling the no-fly zone between the Persian Gulf wars.
“At that time, it was tense, because there was a lot of back-and-forth struggle, besides purely operation flying and reconnaissance.” he says.
Later, he taught fliers to land on aircraft carriers — “the sport of kings” — before flying for FedEx after the service.
“Then life took a curious turn,” Hunter Ellis says. “I was in a hotel in Pittsburgh and the fourth season of ‘Survivor’ posted an open call. I had nothing to do. Somebody was kickboxing a kangaroo. I said something for 90 seconds. Two days later, I got a phone call. Two months later, I was jumping off a boat in the Marquesas Islands with 15 other people.”
Hunter Ellis fit a certain personality type on the series: The super-competent one who gets voted off fairly early.
“You were like MacGyver out there!” says Meredith Ellis, who didn’t see the show until years later.
“I didn’t have luck the way the game turned out,” he says. “But I wouldn’t change a thing. I did it for the adventure and that led to more adventure than I ever could of imagined.”
While still flying for FedEx, Hunter Ellis found himself in sudden demand as a host on cable TV shows about how military tech goes mainstream, how inventions changed history and the adventurous side of archaeology.
“I’m not afraid of the camera,” he admits. “I was the guy on the ship they would send to talk to CNN when they came out.”
Meredith Ellis teases: “They called you ‘Hollywood.’”
The Ellises met during a New Year’s Eve ski trip on California’s Mammoth Mountain in 2006 before the History Channel archaeology series “Digging for the Truth” took him to 12 countries on five continents in five months.
“I flew back from Peru to meet Meredith’s family in Comfort on the Fourth of July,” he says.
The couple moved to Austin in April 2010, right after their daughter was born. He did some reporting and co-hosting for KEYE before he was offered a job two years ago as a morning anchor.
“News was a good fit for the long haul,” he says. “I couldn’t be the 60-year-old guy jumping out of airplanes.”
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| Photo Credit Ricardo B. Braziell |
Matched pair
Along with all his other activities, Hunter Ellis helps Meredith with her design business, hauling big products, taking photographs and serving as “the IT guy” for her website.
“It’s really hard to give up control,” Meredith Ellis says. “Right now, I’m doing everything to make sure my clients get 100 percent of my attention. They hired ‘me.’”
Her design work requires paying close attention to clients’ dreams and budgets.
“I need to see pictures,” she says. “Used to be they’d tear things out of magazines. Now they email me what they like. I make sure we are a good fit, settle on a budget and some ideas for looks. Then I attack a project with eyes open.”
As one can tell from their classically comfy and light-smoothed home, “trendy” is not her style.
“If you do anything trendy, you’ve get to be ready to change it out,” she says. “I tend to pick things that transcend time.”
Meredith Ellis also likes to inspire a little wanderlust.
“Hunter’s done all those things,” she says. “So he inspires me. There will be more.”
“I’m not done yet,” he says. “Austin is something we discovered together. We are growing in Austin. It’s another experiment in our lives.”
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