Catching Up

Marissa Whitley became an overnight local celebrity when she won the title of the Miss Teen USA in 2001. Now see what she's up to six years later.

In 2001, Marissa Whitley did something amazing: She won the Miss Teen USA pageant. The last six years since she won the tiara have been a blur for Marissa. The 24-year-old has trouble remembering some stretches of her life without flipping through photos and scrapbooks. She’s rubbed elbows with dozens of celebrities. (Some of the famous people are listed in a sidebar below.)

Marissa’s not a bubbly 18-year-old anymore; now she’s a bubbly 24-year-old. In the past six years she’s lived all over the country. She moved to New York City, where she shared an apartment with Miss USA and Miss Universe for six months, rent-free courtesy of Donald Trump. Two weeks after she unpacked, she watched the World Trade Center burn on September 11, 2001. After New York it was back to school to study broadcast journalism at the University of Missouri. A semester later, Marissa dropped out to take a job back in New York as an on-air personality for the College Television Network (now mtvU).

But the rent wasn’t free this time around, and Marissa missed friends and family in the Midwest, so she moved to Chicago, where she worked on breaking into television, modeling and acting. She found an agent and appeared as an extra in two movies filming in the Windy City in the summer of 2005: The Break-up with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston and Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell. She also worked in marketing for the State of Illinois while she was there, but by then she’d already decided for herself that she wanted to make a career out of acting. After a talk with her agent, she decided to move to L.A. to be closer to the action. (West Hollywood, to be more precise.) Even on the West Coast, she can’t escape the echoes of her life in 417-land; one of her acting classes is taught by the casting director who cast Brad Pitt in his first commercial.

No matter where she moves, Marissa says she can’t stay away from Springfield for too long. She usually visits five or six times a year, mostly on holidays and special occasions. Those visits seem to be more common now. “I know a lot of people getting married,” she says. “I guess it’s that time in life.” And while she admits that she sometimes couldn’t wait to get away from Springfield growing up, she still looks forward to every chance she has to come back and go to First Friday Art Walk or hear Speakeasy. Oh, and she says it was love at first bite when she visited Ocean Zen for the first time in March.

While she can’t thank her supporters enough for the encouragement they’ve given her—seriously, she wouldn’t stop talking about it—she knows that she can’t fall back on the Miss Teen USA sash forever. She doesn’t even put it on her acting resumé these days, insisting that her jobs come as a result of talent and hard work instead. Of course, if any casting directors happen to notice her achievement on her website, marissawhitley.com, that’s okay too.

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