What would you do if Yellowstone made you feel something real and planted a dream in your head? For Charissa Thompson, long-time FOX sportscaster, the answer was simple: buy 75 acres of central California and build the life she’d been watching on screen.

Thompson recently opened up on Instagram about the origin story of Ruby Ranch, her $1.4 million slice of country life. When a follower asked how the idea came about, Thompson dressed up her answer with a beautiful picture of the mountain scenery from her ranch in an Instagram story.

“I watched Yellowstone and fell in love with the idea of owning land and helping animals,” Charissa wrote in her story. “The name is from my love of the movie, Wizard of Oz. We’re on year 3 of ownership, and RR has come a long way.”

The Wizard of Oz thread runs deep. Ruby Ranch, and even its general store on the property, is named after the character Dorothy’s ruby slippers. For someone who built her brand on bringing energy to the broadcast booth, the ranch is the opposite: quiet, purposeful, and deeply personal.

What’s more, the Ruby Ranch isn’t just land; it’s a fully designed compound. The property is home to Thompson’s main residence, a guest cottage, a garden, a saloon, a boathouse, and a general store, all designed by Thompson herself through her interior design company, House & Home.

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The ranch is populated with cattle, horses, ducks, sheep, a pig, five cats, and five dogs. Thompson had called it her “biggest project to date,” and the logistics alone were a feat.

“The Ranch is 75 acres in the middle of central California and not an easy location to get in and out for movers, but my team rocked it!” Charissa had shared once.

Now, the ranch has become Charissa Thompson’s reset button, especially during uncertain professional stretches. When her FOX contract expired after the 2024 NFL season, and speculations swirled about her future, Thompson quietly retreated to Ruby Ranch. While she was away, her best friend and on-air partner, Erin Andrews, mentioned on their podcast that she missed her. The bond between the two, co-hosts of the Calm Down podcast, has always played out publicly. As for Thompson’s ranch disappearances, they’ve become part of that story.

Thompson eventually re-signed with FOX and shut down the exit rumors directly, even before that. The ranch, it seems, wasn’t a retreat from the career; it was fuel for it. But while she’s living the country life dream through Ruby Ranch, her primary California home is giving her quite the headache.

A nightmare back in the city

For three years, Charissa Thompson has battled a recurring roof and deck leak that just won’t quit. She even paid a substantial amount to have the entire deck ripped up and redone. But even with that, she had to fly home and receive photos from her dog walker showing water pooling inside her light sockets during a rainstorm. She came back to pots and towels scattered across her living room, again.

“I love my life. I’m so grateful that I own a home,” Thompson opened up on a recent episode of the Calm Down podcast. “I know not everyone gets to do that. I’ve worked my a** off to own a house. It was like my greatest accomplishment when I first bought a house. However, there are also times I wish I were renting some chic little apartment in New York. Also, I’ll be living in the garage now.”

But the leak situation is more layered than a bad contractor. Thompson’s home was previously robbed, which means she refuses to give workers unsupervised access, forcing her to be present for every single repair visit. That burden, compounded by failed fixes, pushed her to a breaking point that she aired on her podcast.

“I will get a lawyer involved,” Charissa declared. “And I’m not litigious. I’m not one of these people who like to just throw that around because God knows they’re out there. I’ve had to deal with them.”

Charissa shone through every challenge in her life so far, logging holidays away from home and grinding through every NFL season. Now facing this new dilemma, she won’t simply eat the cost of shoddy workmanship. But for now, her frustration peaks as she jokes about having to live in the garage.

It’s a sharp contrast, owning a 75-acre ranch she designed herself from the ground up, while her primary home literally leaks around her. Charissa Thompson, who turned a Yellowstone binge into a real-life cattle ranch, isn’t someone who backs down from a challenge. Whether it’s a legal battle over water damage or building a general store in the middle of central California, she’ll see it through. Because that’s exactly who she is.