He Lost Everything, Then Found True Love and Himself

Hello, heroines, and welcome back for another interview. This afternoon, I have the pleasure of bringing you Mr. Brian Snow, also known as the Snowman. How are you, Brian?

I'm doing great. It's an honor to be on with you this afternoon. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. I think we're gonna have a ball. So let's just start with the really easy stuff. Uh, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

I am originally from Chicago. I have been a sports fan all my life, so my dad gave me a suggestion: why don't you turn it into a career? So listening to a Bulls game back home, I heard the voice of, uh, Jim Durham call Bulls game on the radio, and I said, okay, that's what I want to do. I couldn't do the first job I wanted, which was to host The Price Is Right, because Hello, Bob Barker was there first and longer. So I couldn't do that. So I decided I'll do the next best thing. So I heard Jim Durham, then I heard the voice of Wayne Larrabee, who I later met, and many, many others, and started to pursue a sports announcing career in December of 1995. Called my first game on a total whim because my friend Kevin was going to check out a camera and you know, just do some filming and some footage for his class. And I said, can you attach a microphone to that? He said, yeah, what do you have in mind? And apparently that evil smile on my face told him what he needed to know because he quickly hurried back into the office, checked it out, and he said, let's go do something. So without any notes and any preparation, that was my first play-by-play call. And beginning this fall, I will celebrate my 30th year That's awesome.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

That's very cool. So, um, heroines, you might be wondering, why is Brian here? Because sportscaster, sports voiceover, all of that, how does it all come together? Well, it all comes together because we all face challenges. We all have a story of heartbreak, if not worse, in our history. So that's what I wanted to tap into today so that we can start to see that we're not alone when we're going through these stories. So I wanted Bryan to come in and share a little bit about what some of those stories have been for him and what the lessons are that he's learned through the years. And more importantly, to give you hope because he has a beautiful bride who he's been together for 7 years, some time now, right?

7 years.

So it's— so there is hope at the end of the tunnel, but it's also because what we go through really shape who we are and how we show up in future relationships. So, um, Brian, just kicking this off, what's been the single biggest lesson that you have learned from what you've gone through in your, let's say, romantic life? And how is that impacting how you show up today in your relationship?

Three very significant relationships, uh, shape who I am. I met Chantel at age 22 down in North Carolina, and we quickly got married. And we didn't know each other at all, like we just went through the motions for 7 months. And the next thing I knew, uh, we were inside a courthouse and we were getting married. And the first lesson I taught I said to myself was, I don't know this woman at all. What the hell am I doing? I was also at the time 22 years old. Again, what the hell am I doing? That fizzled out. And once I got— I kept being told I can do bad all by myself. My brain snapped and said, screw it. And I packed a bag and I left. Then Sometime later, I met Liz, who wound up being the father of my, my daughter Donna. Liz and Donna were stripped from me by very prejudiced people, her family, and I couldn't get them back. I couldn't get Donna back because she wound up passing away. Uh, the lesson I learned there, it is possible to find your happily ever after. That was 2015. Later that, uh, year, I met, uh, my ex, Miss Dials, and I wound up being abused physically, emotionally, financially. And I was, uh, working in Michigan City at the time, and Even though I was the one that was abused, I was the one that was made out to be the villain because I had enough. I've talked to so many women that have been in abusive relationships because I didn't know which way to turn. And it's the point where you've had enough and you stand up for yourself that they turn everything on you and make you out to be the villain. Even though you're not. All I did was call games and be great to her, and yet almost everyone she's talked to didn't believe it, to the point where I found out a week before Christmas 2015 that she was cheating on me with my then best friend for a while. And I didn't know that. I didn't pick up the clues until it was too late when they revealed the relationship to me. And I was at the time grieving for my daughter who I found out, um, had passed away. And the day I found out she passed away, I was hiding in a hotel from Ms. Stiles. Because I didn't want her to find me. I didn't want her to find my car. I didn't want her to find where I was or anything. But one day she did find me. She did find me when I was working at a McDonald's, and I was basically homeless at the time. When she said to me, and I quote, when I told her about, uh, my daughter passing away— and, uh, to any of the heroines who have gone through grief It ain't easy. It ain't easy at all. But the person who was supposed to love you looked me in the eye and said, I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about business. I completely snapped. I packed up my gear, I went behind the McDonald's where my car was so she wouldn't see me, and I never drove that fast between LaPorte, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois. And I had also had gotten kicked out of the place where I was living because the guy I was living with, who supposedly was giving me a helping hand, said, uh, I hope everything works out for you. Well, I snapped again. I took all the frustration, all of the anger, everything that I had built up and held trying to be a good friend and a good man And I took it out on him. I couldn't take it. I went back in the house and wore his ass out, to be quite frank. As I'm walking away, I said, I hope you have a good life. He threatened to call the cops on me, a threat that never came. A threat that never came to fruition, and I took off. 3 years after that, when I was in Chesterton, Indiana, doing a football game and not having any thoughts of having love reappear in my life, a young lady gave me her phone number, and I said, I'm going to call her after the game. Something hit me and I said, no, call her now. We're at the top of the second quarter. And I did the craziest thing I ever did. I opened the phone, I dialed her number, and I put the phone right here on the side of my headset. And I heard her giggle and I was a goner. I, I can't tell you how many butterflies invaded my stomach after I heard her giggle in my ear. 7 years later, that is Jody Snow, my beautiful wife. She has been with me through it all, and we've, we've faced it all, especially being an interracial couple going through hell. And that hell came in the form of pancreatic cancer in 2021. And it started with, uh, started with blood clots in both my lungs. And then that was June of '21. Next month, found pancreatic cancer. And then the fight began. We wound up having to move back here to Indiana. We drove back to North Carolina one night. For a weekend, I beg your pardon. And the folks at Duke University Cancer Center said there's no hope. They said, uh, we can't operate on the tumor. Yeah, to say that we cried a river from Durham, North Carolina back here to Southern Indiana is an understatement. But this is where Jody got a job, started working, got some insurance, and I got introduced to my new cancer doctor. He said, let me make a phone call, and, uh, he did. And Dr. Attila Naqib was introduced to me. April 4th, 2022, had the surgery, and here I am.

That's a hell of a story, man. So there's like so much stuff to unpack in here. So I was taking notes as you were talking. Um, so the, the— you talked about Chantel first and how you guys got married when you didn't even know each other. Um, the first thing that came to my mind was, at 22, did you even know yourself?

30 years later, I can answer that question: hell no. I just knew I had a dream I wanted to follow, and I thought someone was going to be a ride or die with me. Did I know myself completely at age 22? Not a chance.

Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's funny how The worst of experiences bring us the biggest gifts if we care to look for them. Right. And I mean, I, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I was married at 30. Did I know myself at 30? Hell no. I didn't.

And I had never agreed.

You know, it's like, you gotta go through some stuff before you figure out what you're made of and who you are, because those are— it's those defining moments that shape you, right? So yeah, it sucks that we go through this stuff, but it's also, again, it's also a gift. So, um, when— after your second relationship. You talked about it is possible to find your happily ever after. Um, what do you feel contributed most to you being able to find the love that you now have with Jodi?

Oh, so many times you're with people that you think would be good for you, and then they wind up betraying you. And then you think, and you just finally wonder, am I ever going to be in a happy place? I haven't revealed this to many on many interviews. I'll reveal it to the heroines here. After I lost Liz and Donna And after I got out of my abusive relationship, which took until mid-2016, I completely shut down. I gave up. I said this, and then, um, July of 2018, I was in a Starbucks. It was raining. I mentally checked out. I said, this is it. I don't care if I live or die tonight. And I was staying in a homeless shelter at the time. That's when I got the ping that saved my life from Jodi, because we did meet on a website. And it's like she raced the clock and yanked me back from that mountain, from that, from that cliff.

And you know, I, I just want to say something because you talked about meeting Jodi on a website. I met my honey Facebook. So sometimes you get lucky.

Sometimes you get extremely lucky.

So, and it's going back to also what you were saying before. When you're in the right relationship with the right person, it changes your world.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Because show— being able to show up as who you are and know that you're safe, even if it's not all roses.

Mm-hmm.

Because stuff happens, right? We get into argument, we have stupid fights, we Oh yeah, but having that safe space, through that you can weather any storm.

I am living proof of that, that you can weather any storm. I mean, aside of the health issues, um, financial issues have popped up because I haven't been able to work, and I'm trying to get back to work. Then my car decided to die on me and have a few other problems, and I'm thinking, great, now I can't work, now I can't help my family. And Jodi knows me. Jodi put her arms around me and said, I just want you to get healthy, which I am. Unfortunately, there's a struggle going on in me internally, wanting to concentrate on what I'm building as a business with my sportscasting business and getting healthy at the same time, but seeing the struggle in my wife's eyes with all the financial burdens she's had to bear, and for that matter, my daughter. And it's like I have to be able to rescue them some kind of way. And though many times my wife has said, we just want you to get healthy, because I've also suffered— I've also gone through kidney failure I've had two toes amputated. All the stuff beginning with the blood clots has happened within 3 years' time.

Dude, could you have more shit going on in your life? Like, really?

So I tell you what, sometimes you, you're just like, why me? I can't tell you how many days I've woken up and I've said, why me?

I get why you've said that. Yeah, you've been given more than your fair share.

Well, the lady who gave me this some time ago—

okay, uh, it looks like a pumpkin. Is it a blue pumpkin? Okay.

Yeah, honoring the Indianapolis Colts, which is her favorite team. Said, keep going. And she also gave me this talisman honoring her nickname to me, as I am her dragon. Okay, there's my why. Sometimes I say, why me? And all she has to do is just give me a peck on the lips and go, why not you? Why can't I be the walking miracle? And all the heroines out there, why can't you be the walking miracle? Because many in society will say, well, you're not supposed to go through all that and survive. And hell, I've been told that to my face. I've been told that to my face. You're not supposed to be here. But they don't complete their thought. They just go— but true or false, they look at me and they go You're not supposed to be here. Uh, I'm here. What's the problem?

Oh my God. It's just, you know, I think about when you're in the middle of the storm, right? It can be so difficult to think about the good or to think about what good can come out of this. And it's only when you're on the other side that you can look and you can say, dang, I've been through some stuff. I'm doing okay. Right. And I want to go back to Jodi for a second, because we just talked about how having the right partner in your life makes all of the difference. If I were to ask her, Um, what the— what she admires the most about you, what do you think she would say?

She'd have many answers, but, um, I think her answer would be resiliency, because since cancer, I can't tell you how many times I've mentally checked out And she would give me a playful bonk upside the head and go, oh no you don't, you promised me a 50-year wedding anniversary, so you got to keep going. But she knows, um, the, the communication between Jodi and I is incredible. There are days I didn't want to talk to her at all about everything I was feeling. But then, her being Dr. K, and she says, you got to talk to me, you got to let me know what's going on. And then one night, it just, it just all came out. It just all came out. I was crying. And when she told me those words, I understand, all that weight jumped off my back. Because I lived in the past. I lived in past relationships where they didn't understand what this particular man was going through. They didn't understand what this particular man was feeling. They didn't understand— my past relationships didn't understand what this particular man had going on here and here. Jody does, and she tells me all the time, all you have to do is talk to me. Even on days where I'm so afraid that she'll have a standard reaction, and believe me, those exist. Standard reactions do exist in relationships. She does not have the standard reaction. And now here we are getting ready to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. Uh, 7 years to, uh, 7 years overall together. And it's so great. That we've gone through a lot of trials, but we face them together. You get greedy with every trial that you go through, and you all come out on the other side, you get greedy. You're like, I want more, I want more time with this, but this is my person, I want more.

So I believe that in order for that to happen, in order for the communication to be good, in order for for us to kind of be able to let it all hang out with each other, good, bad, and ugly, right? We have to create this cocoon. It's kind of like a safety cocoon. What do you think, aside from communication, what do you think the key elements are to creating that cocoon that makes both people feel safe? And I want you and I to talk about it just because as women, as our heroines, are in different stages of rebuilding after heartbreak. Some of them might be ready to start looking, to start exploring, to start— so what are some of those elements that you think are critical?

For me, it was getting back to being myself. I'm pretty simple. I love sports, I love cartoons, I love game shows. I don't watch the news, I don't watch any serious stuff because my brain thinks entirely too much. So I keep it simple. Jody has been the only woman that I have been with in a relationship that has been able to pull a genuine laugh out of me when I didn't want to laugh. That's one of our biggest foundations— laughter, being silly. She wrote in a card to me once, it's great to find a man who gets my— who, who gets my silliness. Baby, you don't have to worry about being silly around me. I'm gonna be sillier. But what crystallized it is one morning I'm in the shower getting ready for the day, and all of a sudden I start doing cartoon voices in the shower. I come out, I get dressed, and Jody's on the floor laughing. I'm totally embarrassed. And she says, don't be embarrassed, I know that's you. And, and she's often said this to me, and I love the fact that she has. If that's your quirk, we're gonna be fine. And in fact, with me being a sportscaster and knowing so many calls that I've heard over the years, I— there was one day Um, I don't know, I just started uttering something from an old Cardinals game I watched back in the day, an old St. Louis Cardinals game. And all of a sudden I said, "Here's Clark, 1 for 4." Behind me, this pretty lady goes, "Nuh-uh, he was 1 for 5." I lost it. I fell down and out laughing. I laughed so hard for 20 minutes, I, I couldn't continue. I was cleaning the kitchen. I couldn't, I couldn't continue. I was laughing so hard when she did that because no one has ever understood that part about me and has been able to challenge me at the same time, but do it in such a humorous way that you get what's going on. That's Jody being silly to me, taking something that I love flipping it and making me laugh with it.

I agree with you so much with the whole laughter thing, because it's, you know, my honey and I walk around all the time going, who has more fun than us? Who has more fun than us?

Right?

Because it feels— because it's light, because it feels good. And not that every day is light, not that we don't talk about heavy topics, perfects. Not that we don't have our moments, but how we are with each other is easy. It's natural. It comes because there's no judgment, because there's no pretending. And being able to be with someone without that mask And I think being able to be in life without that mask is the greatest gift of all.

That part right there, not having a mask, not, not having to hide who you are. She knows I'm a sports nerd. She's not that big of a sports nerd, although she does love football. She does love watching football with me. As I mentioned, her favorite team's the Colts. And what I've started doing is doing alternative play-by-play streams of Colts games. There's a running joke that when the Colts are losing, she'll blame me because I'm, quote, not calling the game right, unquote. In fact, there was one afternoon the Colts were trailing in a game and I went to a break and she marches right out here and she says, Why aren't you calling the game right? I'm under this desk for 10 minutes laughing. I said, honey, what do you mean? The Colts are losing. Yes, I know this, but you're not calling the game right. Yes, I am. I'm calling it the way I see it. No, you're not, because if the Colts were— because if you were calling the game right, the Colts will be winning. My crew is in my headset dying I'm trying to keep a straight face because I got to come back from a break soon. She did this at halftime. I gotta come back from a break soon. I'm trying to keep a straight face, couldn't. My boys are trying to keep a straight face, they couldn't. My daughter, who does not like sports at all, heard the entire conversation, came out with tears in her eyes laughing. I was destroyed for the rest of the day.

That laughter is medicine. That's— there's no denying. So, um, before we wrap it up, I just want to ask you one final thing, which is, is there anything else that you think is important for our heroines to know that we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to share?

I will leave the heroines with the greatest advice that I was ever given from my parents and from my wife and from many a broadcasting hero. Be yourself and stay true to yourself. No one will accept the fake version of you unless they want something. And if they want something, they'll see the fake version of you and they'll see right through it and they'll take what you got and they'll run. You be yourself, you're setting up boundaries. You can't— you, you can't take me away from me. I allowed that to happen. I can honestly say I allowed that to happen. People and myself took me away from me. Once you get back to that foundation and stay with it, that's the key— getting back to it and staying with your exclusive original identity, you're good. Your exclusive, authentic identity. Get back and stay with that.

Yeah, everybody wants an original recipe, right? Nobody wants a copycat, right? So, right, I get that. Beautiful. Brian, I just want to say thank you so much for today, and I appreciate you being here with us. My honor. Thank you.