A former Miss America and a self-described “unfiltered lesbian pro” walk into a bar golf podcast. Turns out, it’s a perfect match.
“Quiet Please!” debuted last year, the result of Kira Dixon and Mel Reid thinking separately about launching a podcast and eventually coming together to begin the venture. Or adventure, as it turns out. Its loyal and growing audience owes much to listeners never knowing exactly what they’re going to get.
The chemistry between Dixon and Reid is genuine; while golf brought them together, they’re up for talking about anything and everything.
Dixon, 34, the daughter of Russian immigrants, grew up in Northern California and eventually moved to New York, where her nascent pageantry career accelerated. She was Miss New York in 2014 and, in 2015, was crowned Miss America. With a passion for military-related causes, Dixon visited troops around the world as part of the United Services Organization (USO) and married a former Marine, Andrew Dixon, in 2019.
Reid, 38, grew up in England and took up junior golf in her hometown of Derby, about 40 miles north of Birmingham. She won several prestigious amateur events and represented Great Britain and Ireland in the 2006 Curtis Cup Match. In 2007, Reid turned pro. She owns seven career victories – six on the Ladies European Tour (LET), one on the LPGA – and played on four Solheim Cup Teams. (She will serve as an assistant captain for Europe in this year’s Solheim Cup.) Now based in the U.S., Reid and her wife, Carly, have a young son and another child on the way.
Dixon now resides firmly in the sports broadcasting realm. Her ongoing work with Golf Channel began in 2021, and she was also on the roster for parent network NBC at the two most recent Olympic Games, covering swimming in 2024 in Paris and curling this past February in Milan/Cortina.
Since retiring from competitive golf in 2023, Reid has also grown her media presence. She appeared on “Live from the U.S. Women’s Open” in 2023 at Pebble Beach and does commentary for several PGA Tour and LPGA Tour events for Golf Channel.
Suffice to say that despite the podcast’s title, this pair loves nothing more than making some noise.
How did the two of you first meet and connect?
Mel: When I was playing the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Kira actually interviewed me, and that was the first time we met. We have the same agent [Cosette Chaput] and afterwards I said, ‘Wow, Kira is really cool and really pretty, like, strikingly beautiful. And my agent was like, ‘Well yeah, she’s a former Miss America.’ I had no idea. Then we crossed paths a bit and got on really well. I had spoken to Cosette about a podcast idea but didn’t really want to do it on my own, and Cosette mentioned the idea of Kira. I thought I would feel a lot more comfortable doing it with someone with Kira’s talent and hosting background. Then I thought, what an interesting duo – a former Miss America and an unfiltered lesbian pro.
Kira: That was the year I was doing double duty for the USGA and Golf Channel – there was a moment when I interviewed Mel for Golf Channel and then ran over to the USGA set and interviewed her again, and she was like ‘Hello, I thought we already did this?’ I had a podcast a long time ago that I started right after Miss America, and it was a lot of work and money and time, and I abandoned it. But I had said to Cosette, if anything ever comes up or if you hear of anyone who wants to do a show together, I’d be interested. Carrying a show by yourself is hard, and it’s more fun to do it with somebody. Mel is so smart, hilarious and just retired from golf, so she has an interesting perspective. Our joke is that yeah, we talk about golf, but we also talk about life and what we’re going through. We both have a lot going on and support each other through all the ups and downs, and we’ve been doing this for a year now, which is crazy. Mel is the perfect person to do this with.
How close is “Quiet Please!” to the initial idea, or has it evolved?
Kira: It’s pretty close. Originally, we talked about having more guests, but then we realized that we’re more interesting [laughs]. We get a lot of feedback from listeners that they prefer when it’s just Mel and me. They start to attach to our dynamic when it’s just the two of us. An occasional guest when the topic makes sense is great, but I think it’s really evolved to being the Mel and Kira show.
Mel: It’s true that initially our expectations were to do a lot of in-person interviews, but it’s tough in the heart of the season. We usually record on a Monday and episodes come out on Wednesday. And we didn’t really anticipate how difficult the logistics and travel would be to try to pull off in-person spots. Our producers have been amazing to help us navigate this. We now know the expectations and our capabilities.
What are the most rewarding and most challenging aspects of the work?
Kira: The most challenging are the logistics, the time and the prep. These things take a lot of work – you don’t just sit down and chat. You have to go through everything, gather your thoughts and create a cohesive show. Some weeks we’re better at it than others. Mel has a young family, I’m on the road 30 weeks a year, and it’s a lot for us to sit down for an hour a week. The most rewarding part is the ability to chat. It’s cathartic. I don’t have a lot of people in my life who I speak with on the phone for an hour every week. I can say anything. We can give each other a hard time. We laugh, we cry. It’s so special to have that human connection in a world where we don’t have enough of it.
Mel: I totally agree. I genuinely look forward to talking with Kira. We’ve become really good friends. I will send Kira voice notes of my random life. It’s quite nice just to vent about stuff. I feel like we’re on the same page, and I feel very protected by Kira as well. I know at times I can say something that I might regret, and Kira will rein it in a bit, which I need. I trust Kira to do that. That’s the special bond we’ve created, and I think it’s really empowering, especially for two women in this industry.
Kira: Mel pushes me to be a little less ‘host Kira’ or ‘Miss America Kira’ and maybe curse every once in a while or make a joke or give her a hard time. It takes me out of my comfort zone and shows more of my personality, which I don’t get to do too much in my broadcast life.
Mel: I try to squeeze a little bit of profanity out of Kira – and when she does it, my eyes light up.
What kinds of opportunities has the podcast brought about?
Mel: With it being a Solheim Cup year and me being an assistant captain, we have a couple of ideas. We also want to do an on-site LPGA event pop-up episode. And being a part of the iHeart Network, that automatically connects you with so many incredible people, women especially. We were invited to attend a women’s business summit in New York right after the Masters. Men have been able to network like this for many years, and I feel like women are just starting to do it. It’s really cool to be part of that movement.
Kira: We get a lot of requests for us to do in-person events, which is something we’d love to explore. We want to get out and meet our listeners because we have a niche audience, but a very dedicated one. Every week our DMs are filled with feedback, and our audience is really invested. Golf is our through-line and the reason someone might listen to us in the first place, but we also talk about what it’s like to be a woman in this industry, to be a mom and a spouse, to go through grief, to navigate relationships.
What’s been some of the most interesting fan feedback?
Kira: Most of our audience is women, but the men who listen to the show are great allies. They send us DMs telling us that it changed how they talked to their daughter about a specific topic, or reference a product we mentioned, and just funny anecdotes about how we’ve actually touched someone’s life. It’s wild to be reminded that people actually listen!
Mel: We’re not just having a little chat. When I’ve been at tournaments, people have told me it’s so refreshing that we talk about our experiences in this industry. It can be intimidating as a woman in the golf space, even now, and when we talk about it so openly, it helps.
What has this journey to golf media been like for you, Mel, in your post-playing career?
Mel: I never really envisioned this kind of thing happening, mostly because I don’t really know what I’m doing [laughs]. Doing the podcast has really helped me from a media perspective, and I’m fortunate to be surrounded by many incredible women in this industry. Kira is obviously one of them, and I’ve learned so much from her, sometimes without her even knowing. The way she hosts, the way she sends Google docs. I’m very much a sponge at this point, starting again in a new career. I can see it already transitioning to when I’m on TV or doing Live From or in the booth, and that’s because I get to work with Kira every week. I never thought I’d have a podcast or get into a career in broadcasting quite as neatly as I have done. I love it, and to still be part of golf in such a heavy way is something I’m very grateful for.
Kira: Our Golf Channel team loves Mel. The players love hearing from her, because she talks in a way that’s super-relatable to them because she’s still so close to her playing career. She keeps it real in a TV-appropriate way and then in a podcast way, which are two different modes. Mel brings an authenticity that’s hard to find in television and that’s why she’s resonated well with the broadcast audience and the podcast audience.
What’s next for “Quiet Please!”?
Kira: We want to grow and reach a wider audience. We’re in our second year with iHeart and are happy with the way things are playing out. More merchandise, more guests, more events, more everything, because we’re both super-committed to this despite the logistics. We want to maximize what we’re getting out of the show going forward.
Mel: In a world that’s full of Instagram posts and Tik Toks that are sometimes not real, we are very real. Obviously, our producers clean it up a little bit, but the majority of the show is pretty raw and authentic.