By Cathy Miller

Katie Grace Moriarty is an ardent outdoorswoman, a devoted equine rescuer, and an on-air/on-location WRNJ Radio reporter and sales representative. With a smile in her voice and an unequivocal joie de vivre, she’s been a great addition to her Great Meadows community.

Katie was born in Elizabeth, NJ, and lived in Westfield until she was 10 years old, when she moved to Great Meadows with her mother, Mary, and her grandmother, Grace (a.k.a. “Grammy”).

She describes Mary and Grammy as “smart, driven ladies.” Katie was introduced young to horses because of her mother’s passion for them, and she, too, loved them from the get-go, she said. When she was very small, her mom would rent a horse so they could go riding together.

“One day she announced, ‘I’m going to the auction and getting a pony,’” Katie said. “She got me my first pony, Bambi, when I was four and I’ve been on the back of a horse ever since.” Their horses were boarded nearby and “after a while [mom] decided, ‘With the money we’re spending boarding these horses, it would make more sense to build a farm.’”

“Coming here was a big change for we three women, but it was fun,” Katie said, and added fondly, “I was blessed. I had the best mom and the best grandma (God bless her soul).”

While it hasn’t always been easy upkeeping the farm, they got a little help from their friends—a group of strong women—as well as family: “We’ve had a lot of help from our friends with hay; if we need digging, they’ve got a backhoe; if a fence is down, they help fix it. My dad, Jim, comes up from Somerset and helps with the horses, and when things gets overgrown. They made this place run just as much as we did!”

A Happy Herd

As a youngster, Katie was in 4-H and showed horses. At 17, she stopped showing, but still rides all the time along the trails in Great Meadows.

In addition to two cats, a gray one named Mommy Cat (age 15) and a black one named Black Kitty (age 13), Katie also has two bulldogs, the most dignified of welcoming committees, named Wyatt (age 2) and Marley (age 3). 

Her five happy horses—four of whom are rescues—are living the good life in Great Meadows. “I’d love to be in a situation where I could rescue more horses. I feel bad because I can’t take them all, but I save the ones I can.”

There’s the “sweet but unpredictable” Red (age 24), a chestnut thoroughbred with a star on his forehead. He was supposed to be a racehorse, but he was injured young, and Katie rescued him. Then there’s Bentley (17), “the gentle giant,” a dark bay she rescued from slaughter, who Katie trail rides and fishes with (see video). Next is the gentlemanly Cooper (23), another horse rescued from slaughter; Tex (18), a former cow and ranch horse from—you guessed it—Texas; and Kit (31), who is technically owned by Katie’s best friend, Kristina, but “we love him like our own.”

Katie described the process of integrating a new horse into the group. “First and foremost, you have to quarantine a horse for 14 days just to be safe – you don’t know the barn they’re coming from.”

“It also depends on their personality,” she said. Depending, she may put the new horse in a field next to the herd, with a fence between “to feel it out,” and other times she has put the new horse right in with the others.

Fishing for New Ways to Have Fun

About two years ago, Katie discovered fishing on horseback.

“One day I walked Bentley to the pond [on my farm] and, on a whim, wondered if he’d be okay if I took a fishing pole along. To a horse, it looks like you’re holding a giant whip, but Bentley was fine with it. I just started casting into the pond while on his back. Next thing I know I’m getting a bite. I set the hook and reeled it in and sure enough I caught my first bass out of that pond!”

Though she’d been fishing for years, she had only caught sunnies up until then.

Katie stocked the pond last year. “I put 25 bass in and caught a lot this year – they’re starting to populate now. I still take Bentley down, grab my pole and we’ll go fishing together. He even backs up as I’m reeling in to make sure the fish is on the shore. He’s such a good boy. I can combine my two favorite hobbies into one!”

Katie has other outdoor interests, too. In addition to doing more bass fishing tournaments, she took up target shooting a few years ago—“it’s quickly becoming a favorite hobby. I still have lots to learn, with safety being my number one goal!” She uses a Smith & Wesson revolver and a Ruger rifle.

On Air

Katie’s career in media started to take off while she was a freshman at Centenary University. Her stepfather, Bobby Caldwell, a hit singer best known for 1979’s “What You Won’t Do For Love,” was performing at a New York City nightclub. “Kelly Wright, a Fox News Anchor, was there. He’s a big fan of my stepdad, so he went up and sang with him on stage. I met him backstage afterwards and asked, ‘What’s the teleprompter like?’ I was curious.”

What followed was a mentorship—“I owe him the world.”

Wright invited her to Fox News Channel for a tour, where she would then intern and become a production assistant after graduation. “I did that for a few years, commuting from Great Meadows to New York City.”

Following Fox News in New York, Katie went to Nebraska. Why Nebraska? “I love being behind the scenes and in the newsroom, I love the fast-paced atmosphere,” she said, but admitted “I really wanted to be on-camera. Everybody said I needed a demo reel, so a friend at Fox filmed mine, which led to a couple job offers–Nebraska was one of them. I relocated to Columbus, Nebraska, where I was a field reporter and daily news anchor.”

She returned six months later, joining a Long Island TV statin covering crime stories and local politics—“There were some really good feature stories, too. The happy stories were always my favorites, especially after you’d covered car wrecks and fires and stabbings and shootings.”

It was an intense job, she said. She did everything—filming, interviewing, editing and producing.

Now, she’s back in Warren County, landing a job at WRNJ Radio in Hackettstown. She noted, “My family was dealing with many health concerns. Between the family and the farm, I just wanted to be closer to home to help. Driving home every weekend was nuts. Thank God for WRNJ, Norman Worth and everybody there because they were kind enough to offer me a position. They are hands-down like family to me and I am so honored to work there.”

There’s never a dull day at WRNJ! Katie said, “I’m in sales and fill in on-air and do reporting. If there’s something huge going on, I’ll go on-location. It’s fun to do the news and the on-air thing that I enjoy so much. Sales is great too. I love meeting all the business owners. Even though I’ve lived here for 19 years, I never knew so many of the great people who live here until after I started working at WRNJ. It brought me much closer to my own community. I’ve never been so happy.”

Continued happiness with your horseback fishing and your journey onward, Katie!