Bozeman Magazine started as an idea when I was about 10 years old. I grew up in a Montana town whose population, according to the last census, was 768, and I haven’t lived there in 31 years. My group of five friends played together often; the only boy was my brother, and I was the oldest. We played kick the can, rode bikes, swung from a rope in the barn, caught frogs in the creek—all sorts of things rural kids did in the 80’s. And, for a couple of weeks, I played newspaper editor and instructed my friends on the types of neighborhood articles we should pencil into our rag. We went to at least two doors, asking questions and gathering information, and then put it all together on a couple of sheets of white paper. When we finished, we moved on to flying kites, or hopscotch, and never thought much of it again.

When I was in sixth grade, several classrooms were asked to sell World’s Finest Chocolate bars to help fund our band and music program. I only played the clarinet for a couple of months, the one thing my parents ever let me quit, probably because I could never get more than squeaks to come out. You didn’t have to be in band or choir to sell chocolate, and the more you sold, the more your name was added to a drawing for a small black stereo with pink and turquoise accents and two tape decks. I really wanted that stereo! I took home several boxes of WFC and began going to every house in my town, asking whoever answered the door to buy chocolate for a dollar per bar. Almost everyone had a dollar, and liked chocolate, so I sold a lot of chocolate. A couple of times, I sold in larger towns outside grocery stores… all of the sales got me closer to the stereo.

At the end of the fundraiser, we all sat in a big room, and names were drawn for the largest prizes. The biggest prizes came down to a friend of mine and me. I was ecstatic when they pulled my name. I listened to that stereo every day for the next six years. I called the radio station I listened to most and requested songs to add to mix tapes. That win created another passion—music appreciation—and led me to work at that radio station as a high school senior.

This has been a long way of saying I’ve come by my career not by chance. In 2007, with a 10-month-old baby, my husband Brian and I started our own local publication. We did it because we are passionate creatives who love Montana, and we never thought we wouldn’t succeed at putting all-things-Bozeman in one place so readers could learn about their community and be a part of it.

We’ve been doing that every month since June 2007. And the one thing that pencil rag in the 80’s didn’t have was advertising, the thing that makes Bozeman Magazine possible. To every advertiser who has invested with us in the past nineteen years, again, thank you. To anyone who has thought about it or doesn’t have a local marketing plan in place, this is what we do, and we’d love to work with you. Summer ad packages are available now, Food Scene 2026 will be coming out very soon, and Bozeman’s Choice 2027 voting will begin on October 1. We’re open for business, and we look forward to serving you.