Butler Cabin is a small building at Augusta National where CBS has interviewed the Masters champion since 1965. Most players don’t get the chance to see the inside of it, and until Amanda Balionis, no woman had hosted interviews there. The CBS reporter has often spoken about what the Masters means to her, from Dustin Johnson’s tears in 2020 to her years on the broadcast. When Claire Rogers asked her about a memory that stands out, she picked the chair she sits in at Butler Cabin and described what it still does to her.

“You know, it has to be the first year I took over hosting the Late Show. I’m the first woman to host the show in Butler Cabin. And every time I get to sit in that chair on Thursday and Friday nights, I have to, like, stop myself from tearing up and, like, focus because we have a show,” Balionis said with a laugh on the Skratch’s Inside Scoop Podcast.

“But it’s just like, I know, I know, it’s like such a surreal moment, and it’s one of those things that, like, when I say I never dreamt that, like, I would make it to here. It took me 10 years, right? Like, there were so many times where I was just like, I’m never making it onto a network, and that’s okay. I certainly never imagined that something like that would be in my story as well. So, yeah, I mean, when I think of Butler Cabin, I think about how grateful I am to be a part of this team and also how grateful I am that I have a team around me that trusts me enough with a position like that because it never gets old.”

The chair in question is part of CBS’s late-night highlights show, which airs on Thursday and Friday from Butler Cabin at Augusta National. The cabin is also where each champion receives the green jacket on air, so very few broadcasters ever get to work inside it.

Balionis became the first woman to co-host the show alongside Ian Baker-Finch, and she has held the seat for three straight Masters. She was first given the role in 2023, when she described the cabin interviews as awesome. Furthermore, in the same Sports Illustrated interview, she was asked what it means that her interviews will now enter Masters history. She laughed and said, “I cry a lot.”

And naturally so, because the road to Butler Cabin took Balionis years. For background, she joined the PGA Tour as an in-house reporter in 2011 before she worked at Golf Channel. She later joined CBS and started covering the Masters in 2018. With that, she became the second woman on the network’s core Masters broadcast team.

She has described the weight of the assignment to Kira Dixon in the Masters’ Under the Umbrella series. “I don’t take that lightly, and no one on our team takes that lightly.”

While being at Butler Cabin and speaking to the players right after their victories is a surreal moment for her, sharing the room with Jim Nantz has also become one of her most cherished memories. She has often called Nantz her top role model, saying in an interview, “Jim Nantz is number one.”

Furthermore, Balionis’s best career moment, by her own account, came when she interviewed Dustin Johnson after he won the 2020 Masters. He had just left the green jacket ceremony with Nantz and had walked back to the 18th green, where she was waiting. After her now-famous interview, Jim Nantz praised her and said, “One of the greatest things I have ever seen.”

Beyond Butler Cabin, she also works on CBS’s women’s show. The 2024 We Need to Talk at the Masters special featured Balionis and Dottie Pepper alongside Tracy Wolfson and Katrina Adams. It included segments from Butler Cabin previewing the third round and a recap of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

Balionis has kept the tradition alive of returning to Augusta National and signing off on Instagram with “Until next year, Augusta.” She did the same this year, and when she returns next time, the chair that still brings her close to tears will be waiting for her.