Celeb Shot: Ashley Salvadore
How the new girl found her way in the Spa City thanks to Facebook events, a mullet competition and her philosophy of always leaving the resort.
The first time I met Ohio native Ashley Salvadore, she was asking me if I thought the flowers on her dress looked like eggs. We were at the 2022 Baller Dream Foundation’s midsummer night party—which she’d come to alone, mind you—and her husband, Scott, had made the egg comment before she left. “It’s a breakfast bonanza,” she told me, half defeated, half amused. (I’ll admit, once you saw the eggs, you couldn’t unsee them.)
The second time I met her was that following fall, at a mullet breakfast (yes, a mullet breakfast) she’d organized in honor of the USA Mullet Champion reveal, which was being broadcast on the TODAY Show. Thanks to Ashley’s feverish social media campaigning, Scott was named the winner of the “best mullet” title and $2,500 cash prize. Her Instagram bio now reads: “The best mullet in America is married 2 ME.”
The third time I met her was yesterday, the day after she’d announced on Instagram that Scott had once again won the Mullet Championship, making him the first person to win in back-to-back years. “The mullet has been our whole life,” she told me over coffee at SPoT. “I was fully prepared to talk about the mullet.”
But I wanted to talk about Ashley: the hilarious, down-for-anything Manhattanite who up-and-moved to Stillwater (of all places) days before the pandemic, who has since landed her own radio segment on 99.5 The River and is creeping toward local influencer status for her job as a “professional pusher of fun,” and who, if we’re being honest, is the real winner of the Mullet Championship. (Scott may be the one rocking what he calls “The Lord’s Drapes,” but it’s Ashley who did the heavy lifting to bring him all the glory.) Before I could even begin with the interview, Ashley had launched into her life story, which, obviously, contains plenty about Scott and his mullet. I stopped her, turned on my recorder and said, “OK, start talking.”
AS: I moved here from Brooklyn Heights in 2020, a month before the pandemic. I met my now-husband in 2018. He’d come down to the City on a bachelor party. Immediately, I was like, “Who’s that? He does not belong.” I gave him directions, because it was a giant bachelor party and they had gotten separated from the rest of the group. After that weekend, it was like, “Bye, go back to Upstate New York. Never going to see you again.” We literally just became Facebook friends—nothing romantic, nothing flirty. We didn’t even have a phone call. We didn’t even text. To this day, we only communicate through Facebook Messenger.
SLAH: Hold up. What?!
AS: We tried to text, and he was like, “I love you less on this platform. Let’s go back to Facebook.” So the joke is that if Facebook is ever gone, we’re done. I’ve had pictures not go through on Facebook Messenger and I’ll send it through text and he’ll be like “WTF, why are you sending this to me?”
SLAH: That’s insane, but we’ll move on.
AS: So I was having fun—deep in the online dating world. I had one phone call with Scott, I came up here a month later for a date, and then it was like, When should we get married? So weird.
SLAH: What was your life like pre-Scott?
AS: My mom passed away suddenly when I was 17. Like, was diagnosed with cancer and 21 days later passed away. She was 35 years old. She had me very young, when she was 17. When I was 17, she died. No one in my family went to college; you kind of took on the family business. So when my mom passed away, I was just like, What am I doing? Everything really gets put into perspective for you when you see somebody that has everything—career, money, family—just, gone. So I was like, Am I really living my life to the fullest? Do I really want to stay in Ohio and marry the next warm body next to me? So I moved to the city [for college].
SLAH: Then what?
AS: I started working at Anne Taylor Loft, because I’ve always worked in retail, and someone was like, “You’d make way more money nannying.” I started as a backup babysitter for this family and eventually became their nanny. I would travel with them, go everywhere with them. I love these kids so deeply. I do feel like that's probably why I don't have kids. I know what it takes from the second they wake up to the second they go to bed. But I loved being a nanny so much.
SLAH: What was it like transitioning from city life to Stillwater life?
AS: I had a really hard time moving up here. I would cry because in the city, there’s always something going on. Tuesday you’re at a museum, Wednesday you’re at a music festival. It didn’t help me that the pandemic happened exactly a month later. Then I was isolated…in the village of Stillwater. It was really rough, and my husband wasn’t used to it because he’s Stillwater born and raised. He knows everybody. Everybody knows him; everybody loves him.
SLAH: How’d you get past that?
AS: You know how people are like “Never leave the resort—it’s not safe”? My rule is always to leave the resort—I had to get out of the village and mingle with not just the same four people that were presented to me. But it took me being comfortable being alone. The woman I nannied for, she would hire me to watch the kids, and she would take herself out to dinner, sit at the bar with her book or her laptop, order herself a fabulous meal. She really taught me the value of enjoying time alone and and being your own friend. Now I'm so grateful for that because I don't feel afraid to do things by myself. I think for me, too, with my perspective of “you are genuinely not promised tomorrow”—if there’s a really cool restaurant and I want to go, I’m just gonna go by myself.
SLAH: OK, now for the elephant in the room—tell me the mullet story.
AS: So I’m moving up here in 2020 and Scott comes to help me move my stuff. He comes in and he literally looked like Lord Farquaad. And I just had a breakdown. “I’m changing my whole life for you, and you can’t even cut your effing hair. (I don’t really curse.)” He walked out of my apartment in total silence, walks to CVS, buys a razor kit, comes back to the apartment—still hasn’t said a word—and I’m crying. He plugs it in and just starts shaving his head without a mirror, just looking at me. And I’m like, “Don’t do that—you love your stupid hair so much!” But I thought he looked much better. We got engaged in March, and he was like, “I genuinely like how I looked with the mullet. I’m tired of looking like everybody else.” So this one he has now is his second mullet. He says it grew back longer and stronger.
SLAH: I know you entered him in the Mullet Championship contest last year and he ended up winning. What happened this year?
AS: This year I was like, let somebody else have the crown. I don’t have it in me to literally campaign. I mean, you saw how obnoxious my Facebook and Instagram was. And he was like, “I just love being the Mullet Champ so much. Ashley, no one’s ever won two years in a row.” He was so sad about it, and his birthday is this coming Sunday. And he’s so hard to buy for. I was like, “What do you want for your birthday?” He goes, “Just another national title.”
SLAH: And, naturally, you succeeded.
AS: Before I walked into this interview I was calling the town of Stillwater to get “Congrats Scott Salvador” on the Stillwater Village Bulletin board.
SLAH: Now that you’re settled in Stillwater (and have at least a year off from the mullet campaign), what’s next for you?
SA: I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I work at Star Point Church part time, and then I do a little bit of everything. Tonight my friend has an album release party and I’m going to emcee that and make sure there’s a cake. I do a lot of social media stuff. I have a segment on 99.5 The River every Thursday where I talk about fun things happening throughout the Capital Region. And I have to narrow it down to like three or four things because there’s always a fun wine tasting or puppy yoga or trivia. I don’t think people realize—the grass is not always greener. Where we live, there are a lot of things to do. The amount of celebrities that we have come to SPAC and Albany? They don’t come to every part of the United States. We are really, really fortunate.
SLAH: We are.
SA: I’m just here to have fun. In my bio it says “professional fun pusher.” That’s what I like. I’m literally open to whatever is next.”
—Natalie
Quote of the Week
“Dear God, Please give Scott the courage and the strength to propose to me in the near or immediate future.”
—a prayer Ashley would say leading up to Scott’s proposal at the couple’s church
For Pete’s Sake
Last Saturday, comedian Pete Davidson hosted the big return of SNL, the series’ first episode since the writers’ strike—and, obviously, since the Israel-Hamas War. “Though Davidson left the series last year after its 47th season, he ended up being the perfect host for its much-anticipated Season 49 premiere because of how deftly he navigated the tonally disparate material that the episode called for,” The Atlantic wrote. “With alternately subdued and zany delivery, he shepherded SNL through difficult news, silly hijinks, and a surprise appearance from Taylor Swift.”
Why are we bringing this up? Because two days after the episode, the Hollywood heartthrob announced he’d be bringing his live show to The Egg in Albany on October 26. Tickets for the 7pm show sold out quickly, so a second 9:30pm show was added. Tickets to the late show are still available; get them while they last.
Play Time
This past Tuesday, Mayor Ron Kim, the Saratoga Springs Recreation Department and the Department of Public Works celebrated the opening of Saratoga’s newest playground at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Located in Veterans Memorial Park (formerly Geyser Park) on Geyser Road, the $867,000 playground features a giant mega tower slide, a custom wave net climbing area with slides, a net “fishing” bridge and a pendulum swing.
Save the Date
Saratoga Living’s annual whiskey tasting with First Fill Spirits returns November 8! Join Holly and Charles for an informative (and boozy!) evening at which attendees will taste their way through the world of Bourbon and Rye. On the tasting menu:
• Field & Sound Bottled in Bond Bourbon
• New Scotland Heldeberg Bourbon
• Calumet Small Batch Bourbon
• Journeyman Field Fig Rye
• Stauning Danish Rye Whiskey finished in a Tequila Barrel *First Fill Spirits Exclusive Single Barrel Store Pick
Get your tickets—general admission and VIP available!—here.
Water We Drinking?
German internet personality, H20 expert and “your personal water sommelier” Marin Riese was in the Spa City this week testing water with more than 10,000 total dissolved solids in the Spa State Park. His review? “It tastes like an oyster.”
ICYMI
Track Star: Saratoga Race Course Superintendent Anne Clare