Photo by Jeremy Kramer
Second Careers
From: Radio DJ
To: Florist
At her day job, Robin Wood creates beautiful things. Her ultimate goal is to make people happy, to help celebrate the wins or soften the losses. Her performance metrics might include things like “Number of smiles caused” and “Percent of petals sold”—if she wasn’t her own boss.
Wood and her daughter, Sadie Steller, co-own Robin Wood Flowers, but upon reflection, she says she considers herself more of the “hunter and gatherer in chief.”
“Every morning I leave the house before dawn to go to the flower wholesale markets to pick out flowers for the day. Then I come back to peruse the Dutch market to see what’s new there,” she says. “Since Sadie has joined the shop, she handles weddings and the business side. I get to pick out the beauty.”
Wood opened her floral business in Evanston in 2001. It was a stark difference from her previous role—a radio deejay since 1972. Her father and brother, both named Frank Wood, founded WEBN in 1967. Shortly after she graduated college, Wood joined the station working with the sales department in advertising traffic. A couple of years later, the morning deejay changed shifts, and Wood moved into that position. “It was unusual to have a female on the air at that time, so it sort of stood out from the pack,” she says.
Photograph courtesy Jay Gilbert
Wood was on the air at WEBN for 19 years. When she left, she bounced around at a couple other stations for three years, then covered features for WKRC for three years. Eventually, she left media and opened Robin Wood Flowers.
A combination of factors led to the career change: For one, Wood became frustrated with radio’s changing format. “When I started, it was full of humor and mischief,” she says. “As it got more successful, it got more coordinated, and people from out of town were brought in to make it better.”
Then shows got repetitive, and deejays participated in more and more pranks to get attention. There were more events like the pregnant bikini contest. “It was primarily a male audience, and I was ready to move on,” Wood says.
Besides, she adds, deejays can deejay for only so long; the hours start ridiculously early— something she admits hasn’t necessarily changed. “I still get up early,” Wood says. “It’s in my brain. It’s my circadian rhythm now.”
Plus, she’s always loved gardening and flowers—she calls it “magical,” watching flowers appear in the springtime—and she loves the constant learning. Floral design and trends change every 10 years, she says.
And she gets to work on exciting projects. Memorable ones include Peter Frampton’s daughter’s wedding, as well as arrangements for musicians and actors when they come to town, including Nicole Kidman, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift.
We had to know: What’d she put together for Beyoncé? Wood says, “A lot of orchids.”
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