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Cut & Paste: Theater couple professes more delight than drama in managing marriage and kids

Mark Kelley helps cast members of "In the Heights" stage a fight during a July 27 rehearsal while his wife, Christina Rios, looks on from behind him.
Nancy Fowler | St. Louis Public Radio
Mark Kelley helps cast members of "In the Heights" stage a fight during a July 27 rehearsal while his wife, Christina Rios, looks on from behind him.

This has been a super-crazy week for St. Louis theater professional and mom Christina Rios.

One of her three younger children started kindergarten. Her teenager entered her junior year of high school. And her theater company R-S Theatrics geared up to open its largest-ever production: “In the Heights.”

In our latest Cut & Paste podcast, we talk with Rios and her husband, Mark Kelley — who’s an actor with a day job at Washington University — about how they make it all work.

They come from very different backgrounds. She was a child with Mexican roots who grew in a poor St. Louis family. He came from a middle-class west county home. But it was the very different paths they took as young adults that almost derailed their early relationship.St. Louis Public Radio’s Willis Ryder Arnold and Nancy Fowler talk with St. Louis theater professionals and married couple Christina Rios and Mark Kelly and how they make it work and how they almost didn't.

Look for new Cut & Paste (#cutpastestl) podcastsevery few weeks on our website. You can also find all previous podcasts focusing on a diverse collection of visual and performing artists, and subscribe to Cut & Paste through this link.

The podcast is sponsored by SPACE Architecture + Design.

Follow Willis and Nancy on Twitter: @WillisRArnoldand @NancyFowlerSTL

Please help St. Louis Public Radio find creative people to feature on Cut & Paste. Tell us which artists and cultural drivers deserve a closer look.

Copyright 2021 St. Louis Public Radio. To see more, visit St. Louis Public Radio.

Nancy is a veteran journalist whose career spans television, radio, print and online media. Her passions include the arts and social justice, and she particularly delights in the stories of people living and working in that intersection.
Willis Ryder Arnold is an arts and culture reporter for St. Louis Public Radio. He has contributed to NPR affiliates, community stations, and nationally distributed radio programs, as well as Aljazeera America, The New York Times blogs, La Journal de la Photographie, and LIT Magazine. He is a graduate of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and a recipient of the Society of Professional Journalist’s award for Radio In-Depth Reporting.