Before going to college, he tried waiting tables, working construction, selling leather coats, building and installing electrical control panels, and owning pet stores. As a journalist, McRaney cut his teeth covering Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and in the Pine Belt for several newspapers. Since then he has been a beat reporter, an editor, a photographer and everything in between. He is now employed as director of new media for a broadcast television company where he also produced a television show focusing on the music of the Deep South. He is married to Amanda McRaney and they live in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.show more