Interview and photographs by Ken Amorosano.

Alexis Bloomer has always been a multitasker. An overachiever by nature, her entry into authorship started at an early age and was not a fluke. Today, she’s as prolific an author and writer as she is an on-air personality—whose knack for telling a good story branches across a variety of mediums.Yes, she is the “Millennial Girl” whose rant on Facebook epitomized the word “viral,” bringing her unexpected notoriety from all sides the of the spectrum in vitriolic expressions that shook her soul.

From her early days of hosting her own interview show in Las Vegas during NFR to her interviewing craft for Wrangler Network at both the Country Music and Academy of Country Music Awards, Alexis Bloomer is a media trouper. She is also a well-known figure among the rodeo crowd, not only for her consistent coverage of the people in the sport for the past ten years, but also because she is engaged to her best friend, lover, and six-time World Champion Bull Rider Sage Kimzey, with the wedding ceremony later this fall.

We caught up with the dynamic and well-spoken entrepreneur at her and her fiancé’s home in Salado, Texas, to learn firsthand what drives this young journalist and what her future holds.

Alexis Bloomer Cowgirl

CG: Tell us about your path through college.

AB: At the time I still wanted to cheer and Sam Houston State University had a great program, but it was their Dan Rather School of Journalism that got me hooked.  I knew from the start that I wanted that scholarship.  I wanted to intern with Dan Rather and be in New York with him.  So I forgot all about cheerleading and focused on this program 100 percent.

In my junior year of college, Randy Bernard [former CEO of Professional Bull Riders and IndyCar, and currently co-managing Garth Brooks] approached me when I had my stage interview show in Las Vegas.  He asked if I would host my own Sirius XM show and I agreed.  The show was actually aired out of the broadcasting school at Sam Houston.

All the while in college, I was not just reporting rodeo.  I did the rodeo team stuff and my Las Vegas show, but I was also the student that had to report on politics, local, outside of the courthouse.  I was the girl in the rain reporting after tornadoes.  I did everything I could possibly do, including interning for Dan Rather in New York.

After college, I wanted to focus outside of rodeo.  I wanted to see if I could make it outside the Western industry.  I did a lot of job interviews, but none of them felt right.  I didn’t want to be the girl that was making people sad when they wake up in the morning or when they go to bed at night.

So I came back to my roots—to try it on my own, open my own company, and see if I could do it.

I had continued to work with Wrangler Network doing the CMAs, the ACMs, and the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo throughout all of it and remained extremely busy, but I was now able to focus entirely on this new company.

CG: What is this new company?

AB: Breaking Records Media is a full-service media company that’s primary focus is TV production.  One of our shows is America’s Finest where I sit down with people in society who are giving back and doing great things despite adversity.  My favorite quote has always been, “Adversity causes some men to break and others to break records,” thus my sign-off from day one has been, “Good luck and break records.”  For this show, I worked with a great team out of Waco who helped me produce the show and we ended up winning a Telly Award.

This was very gratifying because I knew, “Okay, you can do this on your own; there’s a way to do it.”

CG: Tell me about your process of doing interviews.

AB: I strive to preserve journalism integrity.  I think that’s something that we’ve lost sight of a lot with politics and everything else going on in the world.  They’re not telling the facts anymore and they’re not getting the story out there that people really want to hear.

I like to know the facts and the stats.  And for me, it’s always about making people heroes.  I want people to leave and feel like, “Wow, I’m unstoppable because Alexis just told me I’m great.”  And so for me, I highlight all the things that are important.  I don’t think people want to know just the basic facts about them; they want to know their story and why they are where they are.  That’s what makes new fans and that’s my goal every time I interview.

Alexis at home in Salado.

CG: You’re also an author. When did you start writing books and what has this path been like?

AB: My first was a children’s book, Kindness Is Key, and I wrote it as a freshman in college after being bullied.  My favorite author is Dr. Seuss and everything he wrote stuck with me all these years, like “Oh, the places you’ll go,” and all these little key phrases he used.  I wanted to have a book in which kids could remember the terms, because if they learned to be kind from a young age, maybe they’ll look back when they’re older and say, “Oh, kindness is key.”

And then my fiction book, Alex Dotson: Secrets of a Small Town, was a dare by my dad.  We went to breakfast one day and he challenged me to write a mystery novel.  His inspiration helped me to write the book in just three weeks.  Both Kindness Is Key and Alex Dotson: Secrets of a Small Town can be purchased today on Amazon.

CG: Tell us about your book Good Girl, Bad World.

AB: I made a video that actually went viral—a millennial video—and it was completely by accident.

I never anticipated that it would reach that many people, and millions and millions of people later, I had people writing terrible things to me.  And then Cosmopolitan magazine actually bashed me and that was my turning point.  I was like, “You know what, I’ve read this magazine forever and it’s a women’s publication and now it’s coming after me as a woman.”  At first it really hurt my feelings, and then I was like, “Damn it’s cool, Cosmo’s bashing me.”  But still …  at the same time, it’s not cool.

As a result, I wrote Good Girl, Bad World, about how you can be yourself in the millennial age and still be a lady and be good to others.

CG: Tell us more about the “Millennial Post.”

AB: It was a Friday.  I was on my way to a photo shoot, near Bourne, Texas, and I decided I was just going to post it.  The first day it hit a few people.  By end of the week and it had reached literally millions of people.  At first it was really cool, because people wrote nice supportive things like, “Thank you for saying this.”

But then people started coming out of the woodwork, talking about wanting to hurt me and come after me and my family.  And that did scare me.  After a while I thought, I don’t want this.  I never asked for this in the first place.  I didn’t do it for fame, I didn’t do it for attention or anything like that.  I just did it as a personal challenge.  And I’m not going to lie, that was probably one of the darkest times of my life.  It was brutal.  I did not want to go out in public because people would mention it to me.

I remember I was at Pendleton Roundup and my fiancé Sage Kimzey and I went out to have dinner with my mom at the casino and a lady came up to me.  She was covered in tattoos and she says, “Are you Alexis Bloomer, the girl from the millennial video?”  I’m just sitting there playing penny slots and say, yeah.  And I look around for my mom and Sage and Sage just looks at me like, “What’s this woman want?”  The woman says, “I liked your video.”  And I replied, “Oh, thank God … thank you.”

But at the same time, it took a lot of encouragement from my parents, from Sage, from my brother, to tell myself, “Listen, what you said is right.  You believe in it; just stand by what you said.”  Because I was tempted to track backwards and tell myself, “Okay, just don’t worry about it; just delete it.  I don’t want any more notoriety from it.”

At home in Salado.

CG: What role do you play in the Western industry?

AB: I feel like I was put here because I can bring a new audience; I feel like that’s my role. I think that I make it different because I tell the stories in a lot more detail.  Sometimes I feel that in our industry we recycle the same questions.  We recycle the same facts, and after a while it gets old.  That’s not something that’s bringing in anybody new because if you’re already a fan, you know that.  I want to do something in which the audience thinks, “Wow, that’s incredible—I had no idea.”  That’s going to make you a fan of the sport.  I think that I bring a different edge to it and I am proud of that.

CG: Your and your fiancé, six-time Bull Riding World Champion Sage Kimzey, are getting married.  How did you two meet?

AB: I don’t remember it, but Sage says we met at a bull riding in Oklahoma when he was 14 years old.  He said he remembered exactly what I was wearing and knew from that moment that I was “the girl.”  After a few years, I recall meeting him at National High School Finals again and this is like a freak thing because my mom told me we were going to float the river and that I had to have a guy go with me.

Sage happened to be the guy walking by.  I didn’t even know him. I asked, “Will you go float the river with me?”  He was petrified.  A girl in a bikini just walks up and asked him to go float the river and here’s shy Sage saying that he can’t; he has to go help a friend at the rodeo.

We finally got to know each other better when he got on the Bloomer Trailers team.  I was a freshman in college and he asked me to go to prom with him and I turned him down.  He’s not letting me live that down for years.

And then I got to interview him at his first NFR on my stage show.  It was so cool to see Sage go from this guy that no one knew to the champion he is today.  I was really proud of him and we became best friends and not long after that, we started talking and I realized, “I actually really like this guy.”  Ten months later, I went out to interview him and by the end of the interview, we were in love.  He’s my best friend and I knew that he was the person I was supposed to marry.  When he proposed this Christmas, I was completely shocked, but it was a long time coming.

CG: What do you admire the most about Sage?

AB: I love that Sage is so smart and I know it sounds crazy because people say, “He’s a bull rider.”  But he is so intelligent; I can have conversations with him for hours.  I never got sleep because we’d stay up until 5 a.m. having conversations about things going on in the world that most people just don’t talk about.

He makes me want to be a better person.  A lot of things I’ve done are because I’ve gained the confidence because Sage is so confident in who he is and he really believes in this industry.  I think that’s why we’re so compatible—because we are both are so passionate about it.  But he also lets me be myself; we can be very goofy together.  We have fun, he’s a good friend, and he’s really good to my family.  Those traits really attracted me from the start.

Alexis Bloomer and fiancé, Sage Kimzey. Photo by Emily Rene Portraiture.

CG: When you guys are not at work, what do you do?

AB: We watch a lot of sports documentaries.  We love to drive around the property.  We like to play with our dog.  Sage loves to golf.  I love to draw and write.

We love travel and adventure, whether it be driving around the place, or going to D.C. just to explore, or going to museums or New York.  We like to do things that are out of the ordinary, that are away from the industry because we are so immersed in rodeo most of the time.

I think that was why we’re so excited about the wedding.  We decided that this is going to be a day just about us.  There’s no rodeos, there’s no other reason, just everybody being together for a wedding.  And that’s pretty exciting!

CG: What’s that day going to be like?

AB: It’s going to be so beautiful.  I just want it to be about our love and I want a marriage that’s even more beautiful than on our wedding day.  Yes, my wedding will be eccentric and over the top and glitzy and beautiful, but it’s going to be so exciting to walk down the aisle and see Sage because I have watched him accomplish so much, I’ve watched him overcome so much, and he’s done the same for me.

So it’s funny: The other day I said to him, “Can you believe you’re getting married?” And he replied, “I can.  I know so much about you and I’ve seen the good and bad.”  Our relationship’s always been easy, so I want our wedding day just to be fun and easy and laid back, but also simply beautiful.