The Grand Marshals of the Black Patch Festival include Heather Riley who serves as a marketing specialist for WPKY.
Riley is native of Stanford, Kentucky where she graduated from Lincoln County High School and went on to attend Eastern Kentucky University. She later moved to Campbellsville where she met her husband Jeff Riley when they both worked at the Ponderosa Restaurant. After graduation, they moved to Jeff’s hometown of Marion where he taught school and coached football while Riley was an instructional assistant and substitute teacher.
Riley and her family Jeff, Ty and Sydni made the move to Caldwell County in 2003 where Riley continued working as an instructional assistant and coach for the cheerleading squad. In 2013, she started with Mary Kay as sales director and then in 2016 she went to work for the Edge Media Group in Cadiz serving Western Kentucky as a sales specialist. This career move came about after encouragement from a friend.
click to download audioIn 2018, Beth Mann announced she had bought WPKY and Heather was excited about being able to work in her home community and serve the Princeton area. Riley added that her longest-running job has been a full-time football coach’s wife for 23 years.
Riley said her favorite part of working at WPKY is to be a part of the community and helping businesses grow.
click to download audioPart of her responsibilities is to do live remotes with businesses as their salesperson as well as live remotes in the community. She shared that over the years WPKY has developed more resources to do more in-depth services. She remembers during the tornado that everyone jumped in no matter their job title and worked to complete whatever task was necessary. She feels WPKY is truly a super service provider for the community and compares leading in the parade to leading in the community.
click to download audioRiley’s vision for WPKY is to continue to serve the community more in the future.
click to download audioRiley also serves as the president of the local Chamber of Commerce, member of the Tourism Commission, West Ky Regional Alliance and communication coordinator of the long-term recovery group.
