People: Steve & Cheryl Hooley

RIDING THE TIDE TO FAME

Last fall, you might have seen a TV ad for Tide detergent featuring a young family running a peaceful, country inn in the Allegheny mountains. They are Steve & Cheryl Hooley, '87, plus their two kids under two.

The Hooleys run the Meadow Lane Lodge in Warm Springs, VA, a quiet, 1,600-acre estate shared by deer, fox, Nubian goats, ducks and beavers, just down the road from the famous Homestead resort. But the scenic retreat was anything but quiet during the five days of filming. 'First three days they set up equipment and props,' says Steve, a former MSU varsity tennis player. 'The production crew consisted of 70 people, including actors, light and sound technicians, production people, and of course, people from the ad agency and from Procter and Gamble.'

The Hooleys met at MSU, he an HRIM major, she a food systems management major. They married three years later. While he worked at the Homestead--at one time managing the Sam Snead Tavern, owned by the golfing legend--Cheryl managed Meadow Lane next door. Two years ago, they decided to co-manage the inn. 'It's worked out well,' says Steve. 'Cheryl handles the indoor responsibilities, does the cooking and accounting, and I manage the outdoors staff, take care of reservations and marketing.'

They were picked for the ad, he explains, because 'they wanted a true country inn, white, with a sweeping front porch, with innkeepers under 40 who had kids and also lived in the property.'

Presto. The message, of course, was that if professional innkeepers rely on Tide, then certainly the product would work in one's home. Truth in advertising? Yes, say the Hooleys. For one thing, they actually used Tide. Plus, notes Cheryl: 'All the linens shown in the ad were indeed soiled and then cleaned using the advertised detergent.'