Remembering Kasey Grelle, a CEO, spouse, mom, and good friend who constructed her life in St. Louis

After Kasey Joyce Grelle died in a bus crash in Nicaragua on March 23, her household was plunged right into a nightmare. A sudden loss of life at all times brings problems, however Kasey’s concerned worldwide regulation and hospitals in Central America. Her older son was critically injured in the identical crash and needed to be medevacked again to the U.S., the place he spent days at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

It was, everybody agreed, precisely the sort of state of affairs the place Kasey would have been unbelievable. 

Kasey, 41, was many issues: a magnetic businesswoman who’d began her personal firm, a spouse, a mom of three, a sister who was extremely shut along with her two youthful brothers, a music lover, and a terrific good friend. But greater than something, she was an issue solver—one who fought for the folks she cherished and was remarkably adept in a disaster. “She would just know exactly what to do,” says her longtime good friend Genevieve Caffrey. 

Kasey famously demonstrated that just about 10 years in the past, when her husband, the musician Dave Grelle, was run down on South Grand Boulevard in 2016 by a driver who fled the scene. Kasey—eight months pregnant, immediately the only real caregiver for the couple’s 2-year-old son and with a high-stress job in addition—not solely helped Dave by years of rehabilitation, however personally tracked down footage of the crash and introduced it to police, resulting in the motive force’s prosecution.

“She felt like, if we didn’t get some kind of justice for this, it would be hard for me to go about my life,” Dave remembers. 

With a number of damaged bones and accidents that will take years to beat, Dave hated how helpless he felt. “There was just something that didn’t feel good about my wife having to do everything,” he acknowledges. “But in the long run, I learned that this is what she fucking loves to do. She wants to do it for her people. She will fight to the death for her family.” 

He provides, “The whole walking-down-to-the-St.-Louis-police station with a PowerPoint presentation, showing these guys they don’t know how to do their job? That was the beginning of her being like, ‘I’m gonna help all my friends solve all their problems.’” He provides, “That was almost the beginning of Kasey the Superhero.”

A local of Omaha, Kasey moved to St. Louis to attend Washington University. After commencement, labored as a TV reporter in Missoula, Montana, earlier than transferring again to St. Louis for a job on air at KSDK. It was then that she met Dave at a live performance at Off Broadway—and Caffrey remembers that Kasey was instantly smitten. “She was obsessed with him, giddy for him,” Caffrey says. 

The feeling was mutual. “We hung out late at night, forever, like, just talking,” Dave remembers. “And I thought she was amazing. She used to say she was waiting forever for me to kiss her, but I liked her so much, I didn’t,” he says.

For their first date, he invited her to New Orleans for Jazz Fest. “And so the adventurer she is, was like, ‘Yeah, of course, and we’re getting a room together,’” Dave says, laughing. “So that was our first date. New Orleans. The rest is history.” Four years later, he proposed, full with a New Orleans-style brass band and a king cake, hiding the child so she’d get the best piece and, in accordance with Mardi Gras legend, get to be queen for the day. “I got on my knee, and I said, ‘You’re queen for the day. I want you to be my queen for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?’” When she mentioned sure, the Funky Butt Brass Band got here marching in.

In the years that adopted there was Dave’s horrible accident and painful restoration, however there was additionally passionate love, three youngsters, and a phenomenal home on one of many prettiest streets within the metropolis—very deliberately the town, which Kasey refused to surrender upon, even after the horror of a reckless driver, disinterested police, and a choose that gave the motive force probation despite the fact that she’d fled the scene. “She was always trying to make St. Louis better,” Dave remembers. 

Kasey virtually went to Columbia for her MBA, however when she turned down the scholarship supplied by WashU’s Olin School, they threw in much more cash—and that deal, plus the life she and Dave had constructed, was too good to show down. In time, she appeared to know nearly everybody on the town. She made buddies all over the place as a result of she was prepared to be self-deprecating, and even susceptible. “She did have so much figured out, but she would never say that she had it all together,” Caffrey remembers. “She was just very real.” 

When Rachel Sinha and her household moved to St. Louis from San Francisco six years in the past, she and Kasey met by New City School, the place their youngsters attended, and instantly turned quick buddies, even reserving a visit to Disney World with their mixed six youngsters however with out their husbands, which Kasey one way or the other managed to prepare into enjoyable. “She just brought the sparkle into everything,” Sinha says.

Kasey was additionally a drive in her profession, breaking into the world of funding and entrepreneurship after getting her MBA. She held roles at native enterprise capital corporations SixThirty Ventures and Cultivation Capital earlier than main the digital media agency Quillt to a profitable acquisition in 2022.

Then, alongside Jesse Pujji, Kasey co-founded Aux Insights, a worldwide advisory agency targeted on offering digital advertising options and due diligence for personal fairness buyers and the businesses of their portfolio. Pujji says Kasey “got so energized” by the idea of investigating an organization’s digital advertising seeking any drawback. 

“She was a voracious learner,” he says. “She had never been a consultant, and I think she went from not knowing how to put together a deck of her consulting to managing a team of people doing this and being amazing at it in probably six to nine months.” Pujji says Kasey’s distinctive background with advertising and enterprise capital gave her a credibility few others possessed.

Mishelle Weinerman remembers cold-emailing Kasey when Aux Insights was only some months previous, and her shock when Kasey rapidly wrote again. Weinerman is now a product supervisor for the corporate. She says Kasey was one to maneuver mountains; no ask was too huge or query too small. “She was always pushing to get to a better result,” Weinerman says. 

As Aux Insights’ chief, Weinerman says Kasey had a profound presence. She was by no means daunted by the facility suit-wearing members of the New York non-public fairness corporations she met with.

“Kasey commanded the room,” Weinerman explains. “Even when she was just starting and she didn’t have anything that gave her the clout that she needed to sell to these huge private equity firms, she was able to show them what she was capable of and what was possible.”

When Weinerman requested Kasey the key to her success, Kasey responded: “I just lead with my ideas. I just focus on the ideas and what I see and then everyone just follows.”

“She had a curiosity to just learn and understand the problems, and she gave off this feeling that she understood your problems. She understood how to solve them and she knew exactly what you needed,” Weinerman says. 

Adds Pujji, “She connected with these folks, personally, in all kinds of ways. She was vulnerable. Every client she interacted with came away feeling inspired by her.”

Missy Glassmaker, who was Kasey’s boss at KSDK and later labored for Kasey at Quillt and have become buddies along with her, says Kasey’s curiosity set her aside. “She wanted to know what was happening, why it was happening and how she could help,” Glassmaker says.

It’s one purpose she was so good at networking; her consideration by no means appeared transactional. She might have a look at folks deeply and admire them absolutely. “She never had the ego that needed to feel like she was the smartest one in the room,” Glassmaker says. “She got her energy from surrounding herself with smart, talented people in life, not just business.” 

As a lot as Kasey was a drive propelling Aux ahead, she by no means let it dominate her life, and she or he made positive of the identical for individuals who labored there. Weinerman remembers Kasey stressing the significance of life outdoors of labor, and she or he personally lived it, making time for household, buddies, live performance, and in addition herself. Even when Dave had late gigs and she or he’d keep as much as say goodnight, she’d additionally rise up early to stroll—most days at 4:30 a.m. “She loved those hours in the morning,” Dave remembers. “That was how she recharged—without the kids, without me, without work, it was kind of her time, and she needed that, and she knew she needed that.” 

Numerous buddies recall how current she was for her youngsters after 5 p.m., not simply ferrying them to their membership soccer and water polo and extra, but in addition as intensely eager about their lives as she was along with her work. Says Sinha, “She was so focused on them that I don’t know how she also, in parallel, had this massive career, because from my perspective, she was just so focused on, ‘Are the kids alright?’”

For a couple of horrible days in March, the children weren’t alright. Kasey was with the 2 older youngsters on an open-air safari-style bus inside their resort to go sand browsing when one thing went terribly fallacious on a steep hill, and the bus crashed. (Dave, who has retained authorized counsel, says he can’t discuss concerning the accident.) Their oldest son was initially in essential situation; their daughter was wounded, however in a lot better form. Kasey died that day.

It took greater than two weeks for the information to hit social media, as a result of Kasey’s buddies saved their silence out of respect to her household. Her buddies created an Excel sheet of “People Who Love Kasey” and wanted to be saved within the loop; it quickly grew to greater than 500 names, together with the mayor and numerous CEOs. And they enforced silence. Dave wanted time to inform the children even after the household was medevacked again to the U.S. Then they wanted area to return to phrases with what had occurred. No one challenged that. 

The weeks after Kasey’s loss of life have include proof that her religion in St. Louis was justified. The GoFundMe created by a former nanny has raised greater than $360,000 for the Grelle kids. The Meal Train arrange by buddies has each evening coated for weeks. 

“Everything I’ve had to do,  the person I called was a friend,” Dave says. “It’s not like I was just calling an accounting firm or I was just calling an attorney. It was all people who loved us and were like, ‘Don’t worry, do what you have to do. We’ve got people.’” 

Kasey’s closest buddies got here collectively within the days after her loss of life. Some of them barely knew one another, however they had been all decided to assist. It solely took a couple of moments of helplessness to keep in mind that Kasey had written a 40-page guide for the household’s new au pair, which had detailed info on the day-to-day particulars of life. Beyond that, they knew her stance on every little thing from smartphones for youths (emphatically towards) to which summer season camps had been good. “We realized, we know exactly what she wants,” Sinha says. 

Even after they don’t, Kasey’s presence nonetheless lingers. She had a phenomenal voice, low and charming and typically conspiratorial with enjoyable. That voice remains to be within the hearts of her buddies. As Sinha confesses, “I can still almost hear her, all the time, just sort of telling us what to do.” Her buddies know they’d be silly to not hear.