It’s 3 P.M. on a Thursday, and after a day riddled with meetings and errands, Jade logs in for yet another online interview. With her hair loosely tied back, she casually dons a tan oversized hoodie and a baseball cap that still leaves mystery to a fully made-up face. As multi-layered chains adorn her neck, the self-proclaimed tomboy beams effortless beauty, as she smiles from ear to ear. “I’m really being interviewed for this magazine,” she laughs, almost in a daze of wonder. “This is really a big deal.” In a moment of brevity, as if to savor the thought, the multi-hyphenate media personality soaks it in, and then eases back into the conversation.
It’s one of the many endearing qualities about Lady Jade—her sense of humility, or perhaps it’s her insatiable drive. To everyone, she’s everywhere—on TV, on podcasts, emceeing events, hosting gatherings, running up real estate, and more. Frankly, Jade is that girl. However, the perfectionist inside of her sits on the shoulder of uncertainty. “I don’t see myself the way everybody sees me. It feels like I’m not doing enough,” she admits. “I don’t see myself being everywhere…[and] I mean this with all sincerity. I feel like I should be so much further along in life. To you I’m doing great, but to me, I was supposed to be 10 more steps ahead at this stage.”After a 20-year career in radio, the city watched as Jade moved on to blossom on her own. Always the hard worker, it appeared as though the Dallas superstar never missed a beat. “When I left the radio station, there was a part of me that was upset with God,” she says. “And it was fear. I was afraid that it might not work out on the other side because I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have all of these great things lined up, but some kind of way it always ends up working out–and I attribute it to my faith.”
Raised as the youngest of two in Oak Cliff and then Duncanville, Dallas has always been home to the native Texan. The product of a Caucasian mother and an immigrant Jamaican father, Jade learned early on the value of hard work, the importance of the arts, and why greatness never settles. “My dad never told [me or my brother] ‘Good job’,” she reminisced. “It was always like ‘What’s next?’, and so I have always had this ‘What’s next’ mentality.”
It was a mentality that cloaked her throughout her formative years and even in college once she stepped onto the campus at Texas State University. Ironically, she refused to major in Broadcast Communications, and chose Communications and PR instead. “I don’t even know how to write a press release,” she joked. “Broadcast communications just seemed too…broad.”
However, a required class in The History of Radio—and almost being kicked out of college for cheating, was the catalyst that sparked her career. Not long thereafter, the then-pledged Delta visited a local radio station with the guy she was dating. Always in the spirit of promotion, Jade was fixated on getting airtime to promote an upcoming Delta Sigma Theta party that was being held on campus. Needless to say, it never happened, but she was now radio-obsessed. “I thought to myself, I could actually start working in radio…because I actually wanted to do television. If I get into radio, then I can eventually move my way into television.”Jade swiftly moved into action, applying for a radio internship in San Antonio, and never heard back. With her tenacity at play, she got the Promotions Director’s phone number and called him repeatedly—still, to no avail. “The last time I called—don’t ask me where I got this confidence from—I was like ‘Hey Moe, this is Jade. I was just calling to get the exact date on when you wanted me to start.’ And he called me back after that. He thought that that was pretty funny, which made him call me back,” she laughed.
From alphabetizing CD closets, to filing paperwork and fixing coffee, Jade’s radio trajectory began as an intern—for free. Desperately seeking mentorship and with an innate curiosity for more, she quietly watched the movements of higher-ups to learn the inner and outer workings of radio. “I really was like, if you ain’t gonna teach me, I’m still gonna learn,” she said. “When I finally got hired on, I was a junior in college making $6.50 an hour as the Assistant Promotions Director. After they said they were going to put me on salary, you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t about to be rich. Then they told me that I was going to be making $13,000 a year. I was sick. I still accepted the position.”
Even then, as if from the whisperings of her father, Jade had something to prove. Working weekdays and weekends, even while still in school, she was finally offered the chance to go live on air, for the Saturday morning 6 A.M. shift. “I was terrible. Radio is a rhythm…once you get on the air, the more reps you get, the better you become. I wasn’t getting any reps. I was only on once a week for two hours. I was terrible, but I had enough to make an aircheck, which was all I needed.”
Just freshly out of college, when all seemed as it was moving up, it quickly came crashing down. The radio hopeful crashed her car, received an eviction notice, and desperately wanted a new job back in Dallas. After many moments of being down, Jade came home one day with two signs on her door written by her roommate that said, “Thank you God for my new car,” and the other one that said, “Thank you God for my new job at K104.”
“I wanted to go back to Dallas. K104 in Dallas was THE station,” Jade admitted. “But I was not qualified. The assistant program director [at my former job] was kind enough to make me an aircheck, which was on CD back then. He made me two copies: one I put in the mail to K104, and the second one I kept. I put it in the mail before I listened to it. I got in the car and put the second one in the CD player, and I boo-hoo cried because it was so terrible. I said ‘They’re never going to hire me. I’m so corny on here!’”She buries her head in laughter at the thought. K104 never responded until she had a chance run-in with Skip Cheatham at a Dallas festival. Of course, Jade asked him about her aircheck. Not long after, Skip called her in for an interview, which was also in front of Steve Nice—and the rest was history. She planted her roots on the street team and the overnight shift, and she loved it. “I’m not the greatest at what I do, but I work really hard,” Jade adds. “When you show up, people start to trust you.”
It was this trust that then guided her into a new role to the night shift, that then morphed into a position on the morning show. “I was at K104 for 19 years. Sixteen of those years I did mornings. I ended up being on Skip Murphy and Company which was an iconic morning show that I grew up listening to. There was nothing better than that show, and nothing like that era of radio. For me to be sitting in there, I felt like a fish out of water. I’m sitting in there with the legends: Nanette Lee, Wig, Sam Putney, Chris Arnold, Skip Murphy…and the listeners hated me. People used to talk about me so bad online. That was the first time in my life when I knew that I wasn’t liked, and people weren’t afraid to say it. That’s when I started taking my craft seriously.”
With an adjustment to tone, personality and dialect, Jade truly evolved into the legendary Lady Jade—whose name was given to her by K104 Radio DJ CatDaddy—a name that has branded her permanently after all of these years.
“I was blessed to do 16 years in morning radio for K104, and it was an incredible journey with highs and definitely lows. It just got to the point where it was time for me to leave. I had no plan. It wasn’t an act of faith. I thought to myself ‘I’m going to lose it all’. I’m going to lose the love of the listeners.Out of everything at that station, connecting to the people was my absolute favorite part about that job, and there’s nothing like being connected to community. It was the people that tuned in everyday that was the backbone of my life. I loved radio, but sometimes even with the things that you love, when they’re no longer serving you and serving what God wants for you, you unfortunately have to walk away.”
Over the course of the conversation, there’s been many things that Jade has had to walk away from—like her very brief marriage that ended in divorce in 2016. “It was devastating…it felt like a death. There’s a lot that comes with a public relationship. I felt like a failure and I was embarrassed, but at the end of the day I want to be led…that’s what I’m looking for. I really want a man that knows how to lead without being controlling. I want somebody who really wants marriage, a relationship, and to be intentional about the courting process…and I just haven’t found that.”
After unabashedly admitting to wanting to be submissive—but not in the way it’s often characterized—the Oak Cliff native admits that as much as she loves God and believes for her next relationship, there have been moments of anger surrounding the tender topic of children.
“I’ve been mad at God over this last year, if I’m being honest—over why I haven’t had children. My window is closing, I’m in my 40’s…and you’ll have friends that will speak life and say ‘You know Janet Jackson had a baby at 50’. That is never what I wanted to do, ok? I didn’t want to be 68 at my child’s graduation. I’m not knocking anyone who is, because motherhood is a beautiful thing. Despite it all, motherhood has always been something that I’ve desired.”
So in the words of her father…what’s next? From hosting and moderating local events and galas, to the resurgence of her highly acclaimed “The Dash Podcast”, to TV appearances, to real estate investing and developing, even to managing her nonprofit Project 316, what can’t Lady Jade do?
Admittedly, it may be the practice of presence and rest—of not constantly chasing what’s next, and just learning to enjoy the journey along the way.
“We talked about my father being Jamaican,” she laughed. “I am the true epitome of being Jamaican and having 15 jobs. But, I think we keep chasing this finish line that doesn’t exist, and so sometimes we have to sit back and enjoy the wins…and celebrate how God has blessed us [along the way]—and for right now, that’s where I want to be.”
