| Jay was born and raised in New Orleans. He comes from a family of small business owners and veterans. After graduating from Holy Cross high school, he attended LSU. After his freshmen year in Baton Rouge, Jay was still unsure of his vocation and decided to take a hiatus from school. But Jay didn't want to simply take a break, and wanted to remain productive and engage in a meaningful and purposeful endeavor.
The military always had a presence in Jay's life. His father served in the United States Navy, and his step-father in the Army. Their service instilled a sense of gratitude, appreciation and patriotism for the country and the veterans who served. Feeling a need to do his part and give back to the men and women who helped provide the freedoms we enjoy today; Jay joined the Marine Corps. After being meritoriously promoted out of boot camp, Jay trained in aviation support equipment maintenance working on the flight line around Marine Corps aircraft. Once off of active duty, Jay returned home to serve in the reserves at Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base New Orleans in Belle Chasse, Louisiana.
Athletics has always been a part of Jay's life. He was a two-year letterman as a wrestler at Holy Cross, and a football walk-on at Troy University in Troy, Alabama when it was a division II school and known as Troy State University. Jay's college football career though would be short-lived after sustaining a career-ending injury in the spring game following his first season.
After returning to New Orleans, Jay went back to work at the family restaurant business and enrolled at Loyola University, graduating in the summer of 1993 with a communications degree focused on broadcast journalism, with a minor in drama. He then moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry as an actor, writer, producer and military technical advisor.
The years spent in California were interesting years for Jay. It was there, with its varying climates and diverse topography, he reconnected with his childhood love of weather. Jay switched careers and tapped into his broadcast journalism education and began studying meteorology via Mississippi State's broadcast meteorology program. During his first semester, Jay secured a job at the NBC-TV affiliate, KSBW, along California's Central Coast as the weekend forecaster and moved to the Monterey Bay area.
Jay finished his meteorology studies three years later in 2009 and returned home to become the morning and afternoon meteorologist for the New Orleans NBC-TV affiliate, WDSU. Jay forecasted the weather at Channel 6 for eight years.
Jay will tell you he entered the very best part of his life in 2014 when he married Diana Chauvin, chef and owner of the New Orleans restaurant, La Thai Uptown. Then the most life-changing event of Jay's life occurred when his son Gage was born in 2015, and then daughter Mila, in 2017. It was after the birth of Mila, Jay left television news and returned to his restaurant roots and became the general manager of La Thai to allow Diana to focus on their young children.
Believing the most important and formative years of a child's life are the first five years, Diana and Jay made the hard, but life-affirming decision to close La Thai, and focus their energy on Gage and Mila who were both toddlers at the time.
Jay's love of weather saw him return to television news to help out shorthanded stations in the New Orleans' market. In 2019, he worked as a freelance meteorologist at the CBS-TV affiliate WWL, followed by part-time work at the ABC-TV affiliate WGNO from June of 2021 to January of 2022.
Diana and Jay have been blessed with business success in both the corporate world, and as past and current small business owners. Jay currently manages their small, but profitable, real estate portfolio of properties.
Jay has volunteered his time from the LA SPCA to Children's Hospital. Jay and Diana are practicing Catholics and are raising their children in their faith at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church, in Mandeville, where they are parishioners, and their children attend school. Jay is also a member of OLL's Men's Club. |