Riley Miller with the American Idol crew at Savannah last year
What are the odds of taking a holiday trip out of state and finding out a local TV personality is a University of Kentucky sports fan? If you come to Hilton Head Island, S.C., odds might be better than you think because there are a lot of Big Blue fans living here or nearby.
Riley Miller is from Bowling Green. Her parents were both Western Kentucky University grads but her father, a Bowling Green native, has always been a UK fan.
“I grew up watching UK. Western is a great school but being a big UK fan I wanted to get away from home, so I went to UK and graduated in 2016,” Miller said.
She is now the 5 p.m. news anchor for ABC TV affiliate WJCL in Savannah, Ga. —about an hour from Hilton Head where she lives and concentrates on South Carolina news for the station.
Her journey from UK fan to TV news anchor on the beach started when she interned at Rupp Arena as the host of Rupp TV.
“I covered everything from basketball to comedy to concerts to home and garden shows,” Miller laughed and said.
She took a job as a reporter for WDAY in Fargo, N.D., and later moved up to morning anchor.
“It was brutally cold but I learned a lot. I lived there a year and a half,” she said.
Her contract was about up when she got an email from the news director at WJCL that started with “hello from sunny Savannah and Hilton Head.” She knew immediately it was going to be a job she wanted.
“When I lived in Fargo, you never met another UK fan,” Miller said. “When I said I went to UK, people would say Kansas. It was pretty cool coming down here and there are actually a lot of UK fans. It’s my little slice of home here in South Carolina. You see UK bumper stickers, license plates a lot. Anytime I wear something UK, I always get a ‘Go Cats.’ I feel like I am not that far from home with the big UK fan base here.”
She’s also not far from Columbia, S.C., since moving to Hilton Head in February of 2018, and has been to see UK play both football and basketball against South Carolina there.
“It’s cool to see such a big UK fan base at games there but then I realized maybe I am a bad luck charm,” she said. “Kentucky lost so I have been expecting a letter banning me from South Carolina-Kentucky games.”
This year Kentucky has had “bad luck” even in Rupp Arena and is already 1-4. Miller watched the Cats lose to Notre Dame Saturday.
“It has been brutal and we certainly are not off to a very hot start,” she said. “I went home for Thanksgiving and it so cold in the 20’s. We lost and there was nothing to do. Here the good thing is you can go walk off a loss on the beach. Two years ago when we got beat by Auburn in the NCAA my parents were here visiting and we went to the beach after the game to walk that one off.”
The pandemic has altered her work schedule. She shoots video, edits and writes all her own scripts for news stories she turns out daily and normally would make the hour drive to Savannah to anchor.
“Now we have a bureau between Hilton Head and Bluffton, so I drive about 15 minutes instead of an hour. It has been a nice pandemic perk while we are continuing to do all we can for our audience,” she said.
