What a job! What a life! What a joy!

Remembering Roy Reiman

Reiman Gardens last summer.

Roy Reiman had made plans to be in Iowa on Saturday, September 21 for the ISU game. He was looking forward to joining ISU Athletic Director Jamie Pollard at Aunt Maude's in Ames for one of Roy's favorite desserts on the menu: bread pudding.

Instead, plans for the 90-year-old's funeral services are being finalized.

By some strange coincidence, I was at Reiman Gardens in Ames the day that news of his passing was announced. After admiring the lovely landscaping and water features throughout the gardens, I thought of him as I walked past a tour group gathered at the Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing.

His death has sent me on a trip down memory lane, back to the summer of 1975 when I met Roy in Sioux City to discuss a job position at one of his Milwaukee-based publications. I was staying with my parents on our Iowa farm while working a temp job and applying for a job in journalism. Roy was in Iowa visiting his parents at their farm near Auburn. It was our second attempt at a meet-up.

When the elevator reached the ground floor, we shook hands, and he said he'd be in touch. But by the time he offered me the job as an editor, I already had another offer at a higher starting salary. Roy raised the ante slightly. The idea of writing for a national publication appealed to me more than the statewide Illinois position. I accepted.

At the time I didn't know much about Roy Reiman or his publishing ventures.

Curiosity combined with a farm work ethic

Thanks to the persistence of his high school English teacher, Roy majored in ag journalism at Iowa State University. Even as a student, the seeds of his marketing genius had sprouted. The ratio of men to women students was 4:1 in the late 1950s. He hired a student photographer, gained permission from sororities to photograph their pledges, worked through the night to coordinate the names and photos, and paid other students 10¢ commission on each 50¢ Coed Catalog they sold. He was on his second printing when the ISU Dean of Men summoned him to his office, informing him that he was in hot water with the ISU Dean of Women. He escaped with a stern warning to cease further sales. Today we'd call it a precursor to Match.com!

 As a student reporter for the Iowa Daily, Roy accompanied a more experienced sports editor to an interview with Wilt Chamberlain, who was playing for the University of Kansas. He noticed throughout the interview that Chamberlain was fiddling with rubber bands worn around both wrists. As the interview was ending, Roy asked about these rubber bands. Chamberlain replied that he used rubber bands to secure long socks worn over his shins in case his skin was punctured. He developed a habit of wearing extra rubber bands around his wrists. Roy sent his "rubber band scoop" to the sports editor at The Des Moines Register. It appeared in the next edition.

Roy worked at a creamery in Carroll, on road construction crews, and sold freelance articles to pay for his tuition, graduating in 1957. After a stint in the ROTC, he landed in Topeka, Kansas at Capper's Farmer, one of the three largest farm publications in the U.S. After nine months, he was named managing editor at the ripe age of 23.

There he met and married Bobbi, a key partner in life and business. His next job took them to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After gaining more writing and publishing experience, Roy's biggest sales pitch was convincing Bobbi, pregnant with their fifth child, that he should quit his job in 1963 and start his own publication. (His first try ended in failure.)

I was hired as an associate editor at Farm Wife News, a successful 1970 launch. Roy had identified a niche. Two of the largest farm publications, Successful Farming and Farm Journal were planning to drop their "women's section". Their aim was to focus editorial entirely on farm production articles, maximizing the placement of hard-core ag ads on every page. Roy anticipated a backlash. He knew that women often wrote the subscription checks because they were at home when the field salesmen knocked on the door.

He also realized he'd have to make a profit without any advertising, and keep expenses down by employing a bare-bones staff. Others in the magazine publishing business warned him that it couldn't be done. That led to his innovative strategy of soliciting articles from his readers. Regular features included Rural Recipe of the Month, Farm Wife of the Month, Why Farm Wives Age Fast, Ask Farm Wife News, Dear Aggie, Farm Women on the Go –  and more.

Roy published the first issue within three weeks, just in time to coincide with this change in editorial direction by the largest two national farm magazines. By the end of the second year, Farm Wife News had grown to 340,000 subscribers.

To reduce the cost of postage for renewals, he began offering a free microwave oven (a luxury at that time) to subscribers who responded within 10 days of the first notice. Following the drawing, I often called the winner, assigned a photo, and wrote a feature about her.

But the key ingredient was the strategy Roy used to achieve his "no advertising" credo. He created a Country Store of products, beginning with a "I'm Proud to be a Farm Wife" t-shirt, and moving on to a "I'm Proud to be a Farmer's Daughter" t-shirt, selling 143,000 in the first year. "Ag is My Bag" and "Our Cows are on Grass"  followed. Did I mention that Roy's humor could be corny?

The recipes still are delicious!

An entire stable of cookbooks was added in the mid-1970s. The Country Store catalog was featured in his magazines, and staffers posed as models in the four-color ads

My short-lived modeling career.

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The next publication was Farm and Ranch Living in 1978 and later, Country. Then he branched out to Birds & Blooms. Taste of Home in 1993 was a smashing success, amassing more subscribers than Sports Illustrated. When I was hired, Reiman Associates had a workforce in downtown Milwaukee of about 20. Eventually he employed 420+ employees, moving the company to the suburb of Greendale and launching a Taste of Home visitors center to host busloads. The combined circulation of his 14 publications swelled to 16 million. FWN was retitled Country Woman in 1987.

Paying It Forward

In 1998 Roy sold a majority stake in his publishing house to a Chicago investment firm for $640 million; it was purchased in 2002 by Reader's Digest for $760 million. But, as he pointed out in his 2005 book, he "flunked retirement". Roy launched Our Iowa magazine in 2006 and Our Wisconsin in 2013.

Many Iowans will remember him for his philanthropy through the Reiman Foundation: the 17-acre Reiman Gardens, the Iowa State Alumni Center, and the enclosure of the south end of Jack Trice Stadium, along with a series of entrepreneurship lectures, and scholarships.

"Funding these beautiful gardens provided me with an opportunity to give something back to Iowa State for all it gave to me," he often said. The Netawaka Family & Fitness Center in Bobbi's Kansas hometown, population 143, opened in 2013, with major support from the Reimans. In Auburn, Iowa, he helped connect a recreational trail to Grant Park, and built a shelter house at Reiman Park as well as rain gardens – and more. "Give while you live so you know where it goes," he stated in his book.

'What a job! What a life! What a joy!"

I worked for Roy for only 3.5 years. I recall his boundless reservoir of energy, and his fun-loving spirit (jelly beans stashed in the key cradles of electric typewriters, and hiding "needles in the haystack" of his magazine pages). But like many entrepreneurs, he could be a demanding boss. In later years he admitted that he'd expected too much of his employees in the early days.

We did not part ways on good terms. But as years passed, I realized how much I owed him for seeing the potential in this Iowa farm girl and fledgling journalist. Although the magazine featured an ample serving of crafts and recipes, I pursued significant articles, advocating for women's rights, including "Farm Women Blaze a Trail for Estate Tax Reform". I interviewed Esther Peterson, special adviser to President Carter for consumer affairs, and Ellen Haas, president of the Consumer Federation of America. I raised concerns about America's rural schools, rural emergency medical care, and wrote, "Small Town USA: An Endangered Species?"

I traveled the U.S., interviewing farmers and speaking at events, from Maine to Oregon, and points in-between. I accompanied two of our farmer-centric tours to Hawaii and Alaska. Several of my co-workers became lifelong friends.

Within six weeks  of leaving Reiman Publications, I was hired by Successful Farming, and I ended my career there 36 years later.

The last time I saw Roy was in 2005, and we made small talk while he autographed a copy of his book. Volumes were left unsaid. With his passing, I think it's safe to say we're turning a page on his unique brand of down-to-earth publishing, cornucopia of creativity, and homespun human interest. It's sad to say good-bye.

But here's to celebrating Iowan Roy Reiman, a self-made millionaire and publishing magnate. He was a force of nature who never lost touch with his farm and rural roots, and made his fortune focusing on this underserved market. He had no patience with pretense, and he loved puns. His Little Farmers poster, inspired by a photo on the door of an ISU agronomy professor, sold more than 3 million copies.

Throughout his lifetime, he harvested a bumper crop of ideas. And the perfect epitaph may be gleaned from his own words in his book: "I have ideas I haven't even thought of yet."

Ideas are like rabbits, you get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen." John Steinbeck. (Chapter 40 of I Could Write a Book)

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