Tonight, Mary Carillo enters the first of likely several Hall of Fame wings she’ll be inducted into in her life. Carillo will be honored by the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. The event airs on ITHF’s YouTube channel at 6:30 pm ET.
Carillo, a former 1977 French Open doubles champion with fellow Queens, New York, native John McEnroe, has become a staple for NBC broadcasts as an on-screen analyst. After starting off her broadcast coverage career in her sport, she branched out to cover the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Carillo has also become a co-host and analyst of the National Dog Show, a Thanksgiving tradition after the Macy’s Day Parade that draws over 20 million viewers every year.
Her long-time National Dog Show co-host and friend, David Frei, a broadcasting legend in his own right and a former NFL PR executive with the Denver Broncos and San Francisco 49ers, answered several questions about the tennis and broadcasting icon ahead of her special night.
Frei has been hosting dog shows since 1990. Carillo made her dog show debut at the 2009 Westminster Dog Show.
It was clear through our conversation that Frei admires everything Carillo has brought to the dog show world, NBC, and anyone who’s gotten the opportunity to work with her throughout an illustrious athletic and broadcasting career.
On what it means for Mary to have given dog show coverage a shoutout in her New York Post interview and putting it on the same level as he other coverage…
“You know, when I first started doing Westminster back in the early 90s, we were broadcast in the tri-state area on the MSG Network. So I had sports guys as my partners; I had Al Trautwig, my partner in three of my first four years, I had Bud Collins as a partner in one of those years. And they were so used to sports. They kind of poked a little bit of fun at the dog show about, you know, these guys aren’t athletes. I said, these are great athletes. I said this: I’ll put them up against football players any day. And you don’t get to see it in the dog show ring, but you get to see it when they’re out being a real dog in the real world. So, it was nice to have Mary as a partner because she respected that…
“Not that I didn’t get that kind of respect eventually from the TV guys, but I had guys that I won’t name who didn’t really respect the dogs and wanted to make fun of them and do funny things with them. And this was way before the movie Best in Show came out. But I said at the time, this is the real Best in Show. And these are real dogs, and we’re real people doing fun things with the dogs that we love. I think that’s what makes it so much fun to have Mary there, because she loved our dogs too. You can see that and feel that in her the whole way.”
On what it was like to have Mary join dog show coverage…
“I said, ‘Boy, this is going to be fun. I get to work with somebody that I love to watch on TV.’ And of course, it’ll help me be a better partner to her. It turned out that way. She’s the perfect partner to have, especially for something like the dog show, where the general public who’s watching it has a lot of questions. And with Mary, we would spend a lot of time together at the dog show before we shot it, but she was asking the same questions that the people at home are wondering, and she would do that on the air. I think that’s the perfect partner for me to have or for anybody to have in a sport or any kind of a broadcast that is unfamiliar to the public. And she would ask all the right questions. She’d enjoy my answers, laugh, smile, and have a great time with us…
“I mean, even something as simple as…we had a Chinese Crested Dog one year. They’re a little off. They don’t always have all their teeth. And this dog was on; we were watching the monitor in the booth. And this dog came running back right at the camera and stopped and looked face on into the camera, and their tongue was kind of hanging out the side of its mouth because it doesn’t have any teeth to hold them in. And the dog just stood there for a second, and even I was thinking this, she says, with a pause, ‘I’ve got some questions.’ That in itself was funny enough, but I’m sure the people at home were thinking the same thing. Basically, ‘Hey, what’s the deal here?’
“She was always great with that kind of attitude and that demeanor on television that the people at home are laughing about too. So it was great to be with her for all of those things. And great to hear her tell the stories later about all the fun that she had.”
On how many Hall of Fame inductions she’ll have when it’s all said and done…
“Whatever she does, she could be in the Hall of Fame for that. There’s no question in my mind because she’s got the right personality and the right temperament, laughs easily, is intelligent, knows the right questions to ask. She’s the kind of person you want in a television sports broadcaster.”
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