Transitioning from one career to another comes with many hurdles, and it can be even harder if the two fields are completely unrelated. For Laura Rutledge, her transition to sports did not happen smoothly. And in her bid to bury her past success in pageantry, she found her husband’s last name as a timely escape to a new reality.

“I love that you asked that because the answer is yes,” Laura Rutledge said on The Pivot Podcast when asked if she felt underestimated because of her beauty pageant background. “And for the longest time, it’s why I didn’t even… I met my husband really early on. We were like 23, and we got married at 25. And I was like, ‘I want your last name. I love you, but I also love your last name.'”

“Because McKeeman, I was like, ‘I’m trying to get rid of that, because I don’t want people google searching, and like, the first thing that comes up is a bikini photo on a stage.’ And I was very conscious of that.”

Despite studying broadcast journalism at the University of Florida, Laura first became popular for her pageantry success when friends signed her up for a school pageant in 2010. Known by her maiden name, Laura McKeeman, she was named Miss Florida in 2012, with ballet as her competition talent. The same year, she was in the top 15 at the Miss America 2013 pageant.

She treated pageantry as a scholarship vehicle, not a calling, earning $16,000 for her 2012 victory. Hence, as her university days came to an end, she began working for Fox Sports as a sideline reporter, covering the Tampa Bay Rays and the San Diego Padres. As she began to grow in her reporting career, Laura became uncomfortable with her past pageantry life creeping into her present. As far as she was concerned, both worlds were wide apart and had no business with each other.

Luckily, her marriage to Josh Rutledge, a professional baseball player, coincided with her career pivot. She took on a new last name. Laura joined ESPN and the SEC Network months after her marriage and was a frequent face on Fox College Football. However, behind her desire to distance herself from her past was a public misconception of pageantry. In a world where everyone understood pageantry in its entirety, Laura would not have needed such a personality change.

“And it’s interesting,” Laura added. “Because the thing about the Miss America system is primarily, it’s based on community service and interviews and all of these things… Talent was a big portion, but I always felt like the thing that everybody took away from it was, ‘Oh, you’re wearing a glitzy gown on stage, and you’re wearing a swimsuit on stage.’ And that was part of it, right? But it was such a minor part. And I really tried to hide it for the longest time.”

It was not going to last forever, however. Eventually, Rutledge stopped hiding her past and began discussing it openly. But it was not until something happened that she became this confident about her old self.

Laura Rutledge learned to blend her past with her sports reporting career

Blending the two worlds of fashion and sports seemed impossible initially, but Laura made it possible. Effortlessly, she appears on air, and there is no struggle between her past and her present, as she has gracefully meshed both worlds into one. Interestingly, it all began when people demanded it.

“And there was something that changed, shifted maybe around like 2018 or so with me,” Laura recalled to The Pivot Podcast crew. “Like, I started doing Get Up more, and I was doing a little bit more at ESPN. And I was talking to a few people who were like, ‘You need to show more personality.’ ‘You need to be more of a notable person on TV, like somebody remembers seeing you.’ And I thought, ‘man, for the longest time, I’ve kind of tried to hide my personality.'”

Following that conversation, Laura understood that there was nothing wrong with having “different interests,” even as a sports personality. Now, she is proud of both her past and present. And she knows it is perfectly fine to be talented, artistic, motherly, girly, and fashionable, and at the same time, stay on the sidelines “talking about it [sports] or learning from some of the best in the world that I get to learn from all the time on our shows.”